Enhancing the shopping experience through RFID in an actual retail store

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) offers an extraordinary opportunity to enhance the shopping experience of customers in a retail store. There are two types of possible enhancements: increasing the efficiency of traditional processes, or offering new use cases at the store. RFID offers a great opportunity in both cases. RFID can be used to improve the availability of products, reducing stock outs, to streamline the check-out process, reducing the lines, or to substitute the typical Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) "horse gates" by hidden antennas, freeing the entrance to the store from intimidating barriers. Besides these operational improvements, RFID can also be used to offer shoppers new and enticing functionalities, such as a "magic mirror" to virtually try garments on, or an interactive screen in the fitting room that displays information and offers functionalities related to the particular garments brought in by the customer. This paper describes an actual installation in an apparel retail store in Barcelona, and presents some of the initial conclusions after several months of operation with real customers.