RFID in Japan

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) initiated a group called "Miraigata Tenpo Saabisuwo Kangaeru Kenkyukai (Research Group to Think about Future Retail Services)" on December 17. This group, whose members include experts from retail companies, started discussing how the Japanese version of "Future Store" should be.

"Future Store" is a kind of futuristic retailing and shopping environments that exploit (available, but still expensive) technologies such as RFID, sensors, ambient displays, and mobile devices. One of the most prominent examples of this is METRO's version of "Future Store" in Germany.

The one in Japan may (also) include components such as

• Self-checkout
• Sales promotion
• Information delivery for customers
• Management of products

However, Japanese "Future Store" could be slightly different from the existing ones in other countries because:

• this project is lead by the goverment rather than a retailer, which could make things more consumer-centered
• a higher level of consumer tracking may be explored (such as capturing data about consumers "touching" sales items)
• mobile phones could play key roles

The group will meet again in February and in March before summarizing their dicsussions. They plan to present their vision in March at Retail Tech 2005 convention in Japan. Then, they'll look for technology vendors and store locations to build and open a "Future Store" in Japan by the summer (or by the end of the year at the latest) of 2005.

Though much of the technological details may still need to be determined, it seems that METI is clear about using13.56MHz EPC tags for this project rather than UHF tags.

Source: Nikke RFID Technology, December 21, 2004, in Japanese

Posted by konomi at December 22, 2004 03:28 AM | TrackBack