This paper presents the results of a survey conducted amongst European retailers on their plans and
perceptions with regard to novel applications based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.
Whilst the survey showed that retailers did evaluate the possible applications differently, none of them
clearly stood out as the most beneficial one. NFC based services were on average conceded to be able
to accelerate the checkout process at the point-of-sale. This is an important acknowledgment, as 65%
of the respondents consider waiting lines which can occur at the checkout to hold the largest potential
for an improvement of their customers’ shopping experience. While the rate of agreement is somewhat
smaller than in the case of process acceleration, retailers also concede that NFC applications could
make shopping more convenient for their customers. On the other hand, none of the NFC-based
applications seemed to yield cost saving potentials to the responding retailers. The most surprising
result of the survey was the respondents’ low expectations in regards to customer acceptance. This is
in clear contrast to the reports on NFC trials which generally describe participants as enthusiastic
about the technology
