Retailers need to counter charges that RFID electronic product tagging is a threat to privacy and emphasise price and safety benefits if they are to win customers over, according to Ard Jan Vethman, a consultant at Cap Gemini, in the UK.
Vethman, Cap Gemini’s RFID expert, believes it’s time for retailers to go on the PR offensive if they want to avoid serious opposition to the introduction of the technology. There’s been a lot of bad press concerning privacy, not just in the UK, but all around the globe.
“If you don’t engage with privacy groups and bring the debate into the public domain, you’re going to get a very one-sided view,” he says.
Privacy groups like CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) in the U.S. say the tags have sinister side-effects, giving strangers “x-ray vision powers to spy on you, to identify both you and the things you’re wearing and carrying”.
The industry must rally to put the consumer’s mind at rest. Logistics magazine has already risen to this with an appearance on local Sydney radio station, 2SER, aimed at dispelling the myths that could threaten the uptake of this technology. Logistics magazine is compiling a feature highlighting innovative uses of the technology, but we need help! Please submit any stories, notions and outside-the-box uses of RFID to the editor, rowena.hawksley@reedbusiness.com.au by 15th June 2005.