Further, a majority of retailers (77 percent) are not considering implementing RFID,
whereas roughly half of the wholesalers/distributors, manufacturing organizations and
others and 61 percent of 3PL warehouse/logistics organizations were not considering
RFID. More importantly, none of the respondent retailer organizations had implemented
RFID. When retailers were asked about the reason for not implementing RFID, the top
reason was “RFID is too expensive” (mean score of 4.6 on a 1-5 scale), the next reason was
“RFID technology is immature” (mean score of 4.0) which was followed by “no customer
demand” (mean score of 3.9). For 3PL warehouse/logistics organizations, the top reason
for not implementing RFID was “no customer demand” (mean score of 4.63) with all
other reasons returning a mean score of 3.0 or below. This probably indicates that
retailers (and to a certain extent 3PLs) are having the upstream partners (distributors
and manufacturers) in the supply chain implement the technology (mainly through
tagging) and retailers and 3PLs are looking to harness the benefits of the technology
(Bhattacharya et al., 2010; Michael and McCathie, 2005).