Those of us who have young children know how painful it can be
waiting in line at the supermarket. Not only are we dealing with a child
who has reached the end of his rope from being told “please don’t crash
the cart,” “put that cereal back,” and “don’t run down the aisles,” but
at the checkout line it’s a whole new level of combat. Now you have to
outsmart the marketing folks who have mastered Point-of-Purchase
strategy by getting you to buy candy, gum and assorted trinkets (and the
National Enquirer for yourself) to keep you and the kids happy while you’re waiting in line.
Using
shopping carts as a ‘vehicle’ for an RFID-enabled solution is not new.
By leveraging ThingMagic’s embedded RFID technology Media Cart Holdings,
Inc. developed a proof of concept
designed to increase store sales and customer loyalty and enable
marketers to obtain anonymous, point of sale consumer behavior data to
improve advertising effectiveness. .
But, the shopping experience can get even better. The idea of putting
grocery items in a shopping cart and walking out the door without going
through a check-out line, was reported by USA Today in 2001 and it’s actually not that far-fetched.
The bar codes that already exist on each product could be replaced
with printable RFID tags like those developed by researchers from the
Sunchon National University, South Korea in collaboration
with Rice University in Houston, Texas. The result of their joint
project is an inexpensive, printable transmitter that could be embedded
in packaging. Printable RFID tags are practical because they're passive.
Meaning the tags only transmit data when they’re activated by radio
waves from an RFID reader. In that instant, they return the information
contained in the tag.
With RFID customers fill their carts as usual, but instead of going
to find an open cashier, they walk past an RFID reader on their way out
the door. The reader reads all of items in the cart in seconds and
transacts the purchase against a pre-selected account. There will most
likely be other options available too, like signing for your purchases
at a kiosk once your total is displayed. Combining this point-of-sale
data with data gathered from RFID readers at product shelf locations,
retailers could also record the changes to the store's inventory and
automatically submit replenishment orders to their suppliers.
Researchers admit there are some hurdles to widespread, retail
adoption. The printable tags must be no larger than the size of current
bar codes and the read range must increase. With the progress made to
date in the read range of passive UHF RFIDS tags, as noted in our blog that introduced this campaign, this idea maybe a reality very soon.
What then? What happens to Point-of-Purchase displays? Where will the
tabloid magazines go? Let us know your thoughts of what the supermarket
of the future might look like by leaving a comment here.
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