Retail Systems and RFID

The possible uses for RFID with retail systems are seemingly endless. IBM, among others, has developed a system that reads RFID tags and customizes in-store or outdoor advertising to fit the customer whose tag has been read. The advantage is that customers will only be presented with advertising for products and services that are relevant to them. According to the Advertising Association, the industry body that represents advertisers, “Outdoor RFID advertising is an exciting prospect for the industry. Ads can be made more relevant to the consumer and it will boost interest in the medium.”67

The integration of RFID with retail point-of-sale (POS) systems for uses such as improved inventory management to prevent stockouts and automated customer purchasing has been around in some form, from discussion to actual implementation, for a number of years. It is the latter integration—automated customer purchasing—that has been the subject of some controversy. In this application, individual products would be RFID tagged and the customer’s cart would be equipped with a reader. As items are added to the cart, a list would be maintained and the customer’s RFID-enabled credit or debit card would be charged upon exit from the store—all without the need for a human checker. As has been discussed earlier, RFID-enabled credit and debit cards ....