Retail Use of RFID

Retailers and their suppliers use RFID in a number of different ways. Most recently many major fashion clothing chains have started introducing RFID onto garments and footwear. Supermarkets often use RFID to track reusable transport crates which carry fresh food, some of which you may see in the shopping aisles when shelves are being replenished.

Advantages

  1. Improved availability of things you want through retailers’ greater visibility of what items they have on their shop sales floor, in their storeroom and, elsewhere.
  2. Providing you more accurate information about where the item you want is and can be found.
  3. Potentially less queuing as identifying what you are purchasing is so much quicker.
  4. Enables a host of future consumer experiences to make shopping more fun and above all easier e.g. “magic mirror” which allows you to see a reflection of what you are wearing in available different colours, with other garments and with different accessories without having to look for nor try them on.
  5. Provides greater visibility and faster processes within food supply chains to allow you fresher food and for your safety.

Future story

With an invitation to a Friday night party and with a thousand things to do at work I could only ‘snatch’ an hour during lunch to find something new to wear. I quickly spotted the dress I fancied and in my size, but what to put with it? I rushed to the changing room and tried-on the dress. Due to the RFIDed dress the “magic mirror” not only reflected what I looked like in the dress but it presented me a range of available shoes and accessories to match. I reached-out and touched the electronic mirror choosing a pair of shoes and immediately I could see what I looked like in the dress and the shoes, really ‘like magic’. Were these the best match? No problem to check. I reached-out and touched the mirror again instantly selecting another pair of shoes. Within seconds I could see myself in the dress with a virtual image of the shoes and a bracelet I had selected all in the “magic mirror”. Within the hour’s lunchtime I had everything I need for my Friday night and I even had time for lunch!