Galeria Kaufhof, a division of Metro Group, has launched RFID-based shopping services at its store in Essen, Germany. An entire floor of the department store has been outfitted with electronic product code RFID technology, enabling customers to use RFID-enabled dressing rooms and displays.
In the men's apparel department, some 30,000 individual articles of clothing and accessories now have hangtags embedded with EPC Gen 2 RFID labels. Approximately 60 RFID interrogators, with a total of more than 100 antennas, capture data from the labels.
The store will be able to capture and analyze data, allowing it to determine which garments were tried on together, and if these combinations were actually purchased. It will also be able to observe the impact of the positioning and presentation of goods on the sales floor. For example, do racks of clothes near an escalator sell better--and which racks of items appear overlooked by shoppers? In addition, Metro will be able to assess how long goods take to reach the sales floor, and how long they spend there. "We are filling the data void that exists from the time that products are received until they are sold," says Gerd Wolfram, managing director of Metro Group's IT services provider, MGI Metro Group Information Technology.
Source: RFID Journal, http://www.rfidjournal.com