Kiosks: Self-Serving Devices for Boosting Store Sales

摘要

Imagine an employee who knows your inventory perfectly, can upsell any product and works for a flat fee that may be paid by the product supplier. His sales pitch is always consistent and can easily adapt to the shopper's specific interests. Moreover, this modern sales floor exemplar rarely takes a break. But when he does, you may have to reboot. It's not a robot, but rather an electronic kiosk that can extend, augment or replace retail environments, people or functions. In recent few years, the most visible interactive kiosks for electronics dealers have been "build-it-yourself" stations for ordering customized personal computers or telecom devices. Now a much broader range of kiosk applications is being developed to sell mobile phones, DVDs, photo processing and full-store inventories, including additional lines of special-order merchandise. With prices in the under-$500 range (for the simplest units), and growing consumer familiarity with the automated self-service units, the kiosk era, at last, appears to be dawning.