Tracking Awareness of RFID

US agency BIGresearch and online MR solutions provider Artafact have announced the first results from a new qual / quant syndicated report to track consumer awareness, attitudes and opinions about RFID applications.

Recent launches from companies including Texas Instruments, VeriChip maker Applied Digital and IBM have made RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) a buzzing marketplace. RFID technology uses tiny computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items at a distance, offering retailers unprecedented new forms / levels of product data.

In the first wave of the study, fielded in September 2004, 72% of respondents had never heard of RFID and had no idea what it was. Those that were aware had generally found out about it via the Internet rather than traditional mass media. Nearly two-thirds of those who were aware were concerned about the potential for privacy abuse and most did not trust the government as a source of information about the new technology, or have any obvious alternative source to suggest. Over 8,000 consumers participated.

The second wave will explore the impact of recent publicity around new RFID applications, and monitor consumer attitudes and opinions including the effect on consumer concern about privacy. It will also explore what brands, companies and organizations (if any) are emerging for consumers as good sources of information about RFID applications.

Linda Stegeman, President of Artafact, says the partners expect to see rapid rises in awareness and more finding out via traditional media channels. 'Our large samples provide us the unique ability to separate the RFID aware population from the non RFID aware population. Follow up in-depth online focus groups allows us to further explore consumer reactions to a range of applications from mainstream to very complex. We learned from the first study that there were no differences in shopping behavior between the two populations, but will this change as some retail outlets like Wal-Mart and Target become early adopters of RFID?'

Detailed findings from the first wave are available at www.bigresearch.com/rfid.htm . Artafact is online at www.artafact.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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