BENEFITS AND RISKS OF RFID TECHNOLOGY IN RETAIL FROM THE YOUNGER CONSUMERS' POINT OF VIEW

Abstract

Radio frequency identification technology (RFID technology) is one of the rapidly growing technologies with a huge potential of application in retail supply chain. Numerous research papers claim that RFID technology can have enormous positive impact on business processes in supply chains: (1) due to the real time items tracking, they have a positive impact on inventory management, (2) “smart labels” improve automatic identification in warehouses and outlets and brings the idea of “smart shelf” into the practice, (3) shelf stocking and in-store product replenishment is becoming more efficient, (4) business forecasting in the field of inventories and stocks is applying the real-time quantities, (5) there are numerous advantages in the check-out procedures starting from the reduction of consumers’ time and effort spent at the cashier desk throughout the increased productivity of employees within the store (6) it reduces overhead costs by improving shipping and receiving procedures and by eliminating the human error out of supply chain administration activities.
Nonetheless, the introduction of RFID technology into every-day retail activities rises up numerous issues regarding privacy and ethics of its usage. Firstly, this paper, based on secondary data, gives a critical overview of benefits and risks of RFID technology observed and explained by other authors. Secondly, upon the critical overview, the questionnaire was created and a primary research was done on the sample of younger consumers in Croatia in order to explain how they perceive advantages and disadvantages of introduction of RFID technology in retail and every-day life.

Key words: RFID technology, young consumers, retail technology, supply chain