NFC based service innovation in retail: An explorative study

This paper presents the results of a survey conducted amongst European retailers on their plans and perceptions with regard to novel applications based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Whilst the survey showed that retailers did evaluate the possible applications differently, none of them clearly stood out as the most beneficial one. NFC based services were on average conceded to be able to accelerate the checkout process at the point-of-sale. This is an important acknowledgment, as 65% of the respondents consider waiting lines which can occur at the checkout to hold the largest potential for an improvement of their customers’ shopping experience. While the rate of agreement is somewhat smaller than in the case of process acceleration, retailers also concede that NFC applications could make shopping more convenient for their customers. On the other hand, none of the NFC-based applications seemed to yield cost saving potentials to the responding retailers. The most surprising result of the survey was the respondents’ low expectations in regards to customer acceptance. This is in clear contrast to the reports on NFC trials which generally describe participants as enthusiastic about the technology.