Comments on: The day of the RFIDs

By: Gary Hartley

Gary Hartley — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:32:41 +0000

…….. NZ consumer attitute is useful. I would also think that as part of a university honours thesis, the reasearch would be considered statistically robust.

By: Gary Hartley

Gary Hartley — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:28:18 +0000

Clearly, from a marketing perspective, understanding buyer behaviour is crucial. In recent years the migration of RFID technologies at the consumer interface has met with severe agression from some consumer groups and from my perspective, gaining some insight into

By: Duncan Stuart

Duncan Stuart — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:59:22 +0000

Brooke. I really don't quite understand why it was necessary to gauge public awareness of RFID. And you've given us no idea of your sample size or sample universe either – so we have no way, in any case, of assessing the validity of the survey.

In terms of conclusions; the last chart is the give-away: at the end of the exercise your respondents overwhelmingly gave a "middling score" regarding intention to buy. I'd suggest that, all things considered, they don't particularly care about RFID. It doesn't set shoppers on fire.

However retailers and manufacturers should care very much. As long ago as 2003 WalMart mandated that within 5 years the majority percent of all its merchandise would be freighted and tagged with RFID technology. This is one of the cornerstones of their JIT management and slimmer margins. In some ways the potential of the technology – purely in terms of gaining information about the marketplace – is massively unrealised. RFID gives us real time feedback on actual behaviours – as such the information it delivers is more predictive and powerful than surveys based around attitudes and/or crude demographics.

By: Angeline

Angeline — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:41:55 +0000

Rica Lewis, leading jeans retailer in Europe, has recently announced its RFID Deployment. (see http://www.tagsysrfid.com/Company/News-events/Tuesday-26-January-2010-TAGSYS-AND-RICA-LEWIS-DEPLOY-RFID-SOLUTION-AT-MAJOR-EUROPEAN-RETAILERS)

The key differentiator in this development is that the majority of the RFID deployments in the Fashion and Apparel industry have been in what we call a “controlled loop” environment. This means that the brand owns both the distribution and the retail environment. Rica Lewis is the 1st implementation to our knowledge which has the brand using RFID data on the floor of the major retailers. It is our belief that this is the way that RFID will be deployed on a large scale at the major retailers. Once the brands start utilizing RFID for their own benefit (logistics, inventory, replenishment, etc…), the retailers will also be able to take advantage of the technology for applications such as Point-of-Sale and Security. We believe that in order to get traction at the retailers the brands need to find ROI in the technology, Rica Lewis is a great example of that.

Reik Baird published an article outlining his analysis of the Rica Lewis ROI –

http://www.rfid-monthly.com/2609/rfid-rica-lewis-compelling/

As a conclusion he notes "We view adding nearly incremental profit of nearly three-fold of incremental cost as a compelling ROI."