The SME Way of Adopting RFID Technology: Empirical Findings from a German Cross-Sectoral Study

More than 98 per cent of all European companies are small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Even though their structural characteristics are well known, neither academia nor politics have paid much attention to SMEs’ experiences in using RFID technology. Consequently, SMEs that deal with an implementation have so far only few guidelines regarding specific opportunities and risks. We try to fill that gap by presenting the findings of a survey among German enterprises which already use RFID. As far as we know, this work constitutes the first attempt to directly address SME specific aspects of RFID adoption based on empirical data from SMEs and large enterprises. We have evidence of the existence of an SME specific way: Across all sectors and different application areas, SMEs differ significantly from large enterprises in performance objectives and assessment of barriers. We can show that structural inertia theory supports our empirical findings, according to which RFID adoption favours SMEs. We conclude by deriving implications for SMEs not using RFID so far.