Ian Savell

UK

Consultant

One issue is standards - its no good a supplier getting started on its own and locked in to one standard if the retailer wants to use another. History tells us this will put a serious squeeze on supplier profit margins as retailers won't want to pay extra. And if a batch of goods are going to two different retail groups the supplier doesn't want to apply different tags, just encode tham differently.

If the retailers are so keen, they should pay for the initial technology startup costs (but not the running costs) and train their suppliers, a model successfully used in other early technology launches. In fact you can predict success or failure by whether the business getting the main benefit sponsors the technology shift or tries to push the cost down. How long did it take to get smart payment cards in consumer's wallets?