Stores use razor blades to test technology
April 30, 2003
BY SANDRA GUY SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
suntimes.com
Imagine a grocery shelf that senses too many items have disappeared at once, and alerts the store manager.
Wal-Mart and two European grocery chains are testing the system this year, using razor blades.
The "smart" packs of razor blades are tagged with electronic product codes that use radio frequency identification (RFID) microchips. The codes contain a unique serial number for each pack. In contrast, a bar code identifies only a product, such as a kind of diet pop, but not each can of diet pop.
That technology and other grocery systems will be on display at the Food Marketing Institute trade show that starts Sunday at McCormick Place. The show is closed to the public.
RFID technology probably won't reach a store near you for years, but it's the hottest topic in retail, especially after fashion giant Benetton in early April postponed its plans to sell a brand of clothing with RFID-enabled chips sewn inside. After privacy advocates expressed outrage that Benetton could track its customers' movements via chip-embedded blouses, and even link with the wearer's credit card, the retailer assured its customers that it had no such plans, a move detailed in the April 19 edition of NewScientist magazine.
The latest development occurred Tuesday, when online retail newsletter just-style.com reported that electronics experts have created a way to disable the chips at the cash register to try to assuage people's privacy concerns.
So far, no protests have erupted over tests that Wal-Mart, U.K. grocer Tesco and German grocer Metro are doing this year with Gillette razor blades. In this case, the microchips cannot collect or store personal information.
Instead, in the "smart" shelf that has the razor blades, a frequently stolen item, a reader uses radio waves to sense when a package of razor blades is removed. If someone grabs too many razors--the exact number is up to the store--the shelf alerts a nearby transmitter, which prompts a security camera to snap photos of the person who took the razors. The alert also can buzz the store manager's PDA and send the PDA a digital photo.
The shelf also notifies store employees when it needs restocking and can be programmed to speak.
The chips are still too expensive for most grocers to use, but that's not stopping people from envisioning effortless self-checkout lanes.
"The goal of the 2003 field tests (with the blades) is to road-test this new technology in a real-world supply chain environment," said Paul Fox, spokesman for Gillette Co. "Our goal is simple: We want our products to be on the shelf when and where the consumer wants to buy them."
U.S. retailers lose $70 billion a year because of a combination of theft, errors in product deliveries, and shelves being restocked too slowly, according to a University of Florida study.
Paula Rosenblum, retail research director at AMR Research in Boston, noted the increased ease of checkout that RFID technology could bring.
"If everything on the shelves had an RFID label, you could simply walk through a portal, and it would total your grocery bill," said Rosenblum, who hates today's self-checkout aisles because of their inefficiencies.
This week, Metro opened a showcase store in Rheinberg, Germany, that does something similar to what Rosenblum wants.
In one innovation, shoppers scan bar-coded goods as they're placed in the cart. The prices are sent ahead to the checkout, where shoppers simply pay the total.
Other innovations on display at the store are wireless-controlled price displays on shelves that can be instantly updated by remote. There's also the IBM-developed vegetable scale designed to recognize fruit and print out the price sticker.
For the benefit of journalists on Monday, the supermarket used supermodel Claudia Schiffer to demonstrate the system.
Grocery stores already can keep records of customers' buying habits. When a clerk swipes a shopper's loyalty card--the plastic card that gives shoppers special savings--the information goes into the store's database.
"If you don't use your (loyalty) card, you are basically paying a privacy tax for not letting the company find out information about you," Rosenblum said.
Though the data are compiled, most grocery chains lack the computing know-how to learn much from the information or to use it to pitch merchandise.
That is changing, however, as scanners and bar codes become more sophisticated. Bar codes, which started as 12-digit numbers, will expand to 13 digits in January and to 14 soon thereafter, enabling grocers to track more items and more detailed information, said Alan Couch, director of food industry marketing for NCR Corp., a Dayton, Ohio, firm that sells grocery technology systems.
Scanners and shelves are getting more sophisticated, too. Small screens, similar to those on hand-held computers, can be attached to shelves. Grocers can electronically change the prices displayed on the screens, and coordinate the prices with the checkout scanner, Couch said.
The holy grail remains RFID, though retailers concede they will have to work through the privacy controversies.
Grocers no doubt hope the line will be drawn between a can of peas and a pair of bell-bottom jeans.
"Somehow, the notion of RFID labels in clothes takes people to the level of 'Minority Report,'" Rosenblum said, referring to the movie starring Tom Cruise in which ad posters recognized people as they passed by and individual freedoms were circumvented by technology. |
