Adoption of cross-company RFID: An empirical analysis of perceived influence factors

Although the use of RFID in the supply chain still lags behind expectations, its appeal to practitioners and researchers remains unabated. Apart from technical challenges, the profitability of an RFID deployment is a major concern for potential customers. A promising way to increase an RFID solution’s profitability is to use RFID transponders in several companies along the supply chain and share the cost and implementation effort. This paper represents a first attempt to identify the factors affecting the perceived likelihood that cross-company RFID is adopted. Our empirical results indicate that profitability is a key influence factor in this context. Related important factors are the uncertainty of costs and returns and the possible imbalance of costs and returns among the supply chain participants. The influence of organizational factors, such as power, leadership and experience, is negligible in comparison.