Wal-Mart in ‘secret’ RFID test
Joint trial with Procter & Gamble
November 11 2003
Wal-Mart has confirmed that it ran a ‘secret’ test of RFID tagging technology in a US store this summer.
Consumer concerns over the privacy and civil liberty issues of RFID, which has both security and supply chain applications, have made tagging a political hot potato.
The world’s biggest retailer has been one of the companies targeted by consumer rights pressure group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy and Invasion and Numbering – CASPIAN – which campaigns against data collection through loyalty schemes as well as RFID.
In July, Wal-Mart announced that it had dropped tests of the in-store smart-shelf RFID system developed by brand owner Gillette, designed to alert stores when products are running low.
Following an investigation into RFID by US newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times, Wal-Mart has now admitted that a four-month RFID trial also took place in a store in Broken Arrow, near Tulsa, Oklahoma, earlier this year, ending in July.
Shelves were equipped with RFID to track sales of Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick. Brand owner Procter & Gamble could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and remotely watch consumers activity via a webcam.
Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN, told the newspaper: “On the surface, the Broken Arrow trial may seem harmless. But the truth is that the businesses involved pushed forward with this technology in secret, knowing full well that consumers are overwhelmingly opposed to it. This is why we have called for mandatory labeling of products containing RFID chips.”
Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Jeannie Tharrington told the newspaper that signage “alerted customers that closed-circuit televisions and electronic merchandise security systems are in place in the store.”
Wal-Mart has made no secret of its expanding use of RFID in the supply chain, and has asked suppliers to attach RFID chips to cases and pallets of products.
CASPIAN also criticised UK supermarket giant Tesco this summer over its own trials of the Gillette smart-shelf system.
