On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Trei, Peter wrote: > They don't want to deactivate them. Go back and read the SFGate > article I linked in my initial post. They want to recognize when a > loyal customer returns, so they can pull up his/her profile and give > then "personalized" treatment.
And what happens when the "personalized" treatment is cold sholder because of buying the competitions product? My bet is they'll just issue an rfid card and not use the inventory control for that purpose. Connecting inventory control to customer preferences can't be done without an alternate device. I can see how the grocery store will want to track your purchases over time to give you discounts on other products, and sell the info to various competing interests. Discount stores will also do the same thing, but the bar code tags already give that info. rfid doesn't add anything, it just gets in the way of store security (why keep track of *every* item purchased by *everybody* to prevent theft of CD's???) What I'm trying to say is that the info the stores want on you is already there and in use. The rfid helps track items without the bar code, and in places you can't read a bar code (like when lots of items are in a box). It can also be used for theft prevention. But you need to disable it to prevent having to deal with goods bought the week before in a store on the other side of the world. If the stores *don't* use the rfid's for security, and they can already use the bar codes for inventory, what good are they? Bar code readers are much cheaper than rfid readers and so is the paper tag that holds the bar code. There's no economic sense for the rfid tag in the first place. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
