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Buy A Strawberry, See An Ad For Whipped Cream

Written by Eric Athas
August 21st, 2008

It’s late on a Friday night and as Jane Smith walks into her local grocery frozen food aisle, she notices a neighbor walking away carrying a frozen pizza, right near a digital advertisement for 20 percent off of a Budweiser six-pack. Jane reaches into the freezer to grab her favorite Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream but notices that the digital ad instantly changes to hawk 40 percent off fresh apple pie in the bakery section.

This concept is being trialed right now by Germany’s $81 billion Metro Group, in a project with Procter & Gamble.

The shelf trial involves the placement of RFID tags on products at a Metro Extra in Germany, said this piece in The Wall Street Journal. When customers pull the tagged products off of the shelf, an eye-level digital screen displays a message relating to that product.

It may suggest a specific brand the customer should purchase. "When a consumer picks out a shampoo for a particular type of hair, for instance, the screen recommends the most appropriate conditioner or other hair products," the Journal story said.

Metro Group is no stranger to these trials, rolling out several pilots over the years. But this isn’t the only RFID trial happening now at Metro. This fall, the retailer is slated to team with DHL for an RFID tagging trial in France, which has been dubbed the largest RFID-enabled retail logistics system in the country. It involves DHL using RFID tags to track its shipments to all 89 Metro Cash & Carry wholesale locations in France, according to this RFIDNews piece. When shipments are in the loading process, the tags are scanned and the data is transmitted to the stores. The tags are then scanned again when the shipments arrive at the stores to make sure the correct order arrived.

Posted in CRM, IT Strategy/Industry, Mobile/Wireless/Contactless, Payment Systems, RFID
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