Wine Advisory Software LaunchesWine Advisory Software Launches

Many grocery stores carry wine, but unlike wine specialty stores, not many have experts guiding consumer purchases.

Active Decisions Inc., which focuses on guided-selling software for retailers, plans to roll out Active Wine Advisor at the 95th National Retail Federation (NRF) Annual Convention & Expo in New York on Monday.

The Active Wine Advisor is designed to offer recommendations geared toward personal preferences depending on if consumers are "Serious, Aspiring" or "Casual" wine consumers.

"People typically only buy wine in grocery stores when they already know they like it," said Darby Williams, Active Decisions' vice president of marketing. "The type they like really is based on the number of taste buds you have."

So in each category, software takes the shopper through a series of questions before making recommendations. Among other things, consumers can ask for taste-based wine recommendations, match the wine to the food they intend to serve it with or scan for ratings on similar wines.

Williams said Taste Profiler is the software that recommends wine based on taste. It uses master of wine Tim Hanni's Wine Quest method as a basis to create flavor profiles and organizes the list into manageable categories. Questions that help determine flavor include preferences on how the consumer drinks coffee. Do they add sugar or milk? Or which mixed alcoholic drinks they prefer.

There are hundreds of wines to choose from with nothing but the label to differentiate them. "Those big, bold wines are too intensive for some," Williams said. "A Cabernet Sauvignon red wine might be ideal for a consumer with a typical number of taste buds, but it might taste bitter for a consumer with a large number of taste buds like me."

Active Decisions will showcase the software in an IBM Corp. self-serve wireless kiosk at NRF. There also are plans being considered to introduce versions for the Web and mobile devices, such as cellular phones and PDAs.

AMR Research Inc. surveyed 147-retail IT and store operations executives across several industries last year to gauge future investments for in store "advanced selling technologies," such as the Active Wine Advisory, in kiosks and handhelds devices. The research firm concluded that kiosk adoption will rise 32 percent by the end of 2007.

While almost half of the retailers surveyed have some form of kiosk installed today, this hardware is only present in 1 percent of their store locations on average. By the end of 2007, however, the respondents plan to install kiosks in 17 percent of their stores.