Deploying RFID in the fashion and apparel sector: An "in the field" analysis to understand where the technology is going to

The paper performs a review of the literature of RFID deployments in the fashion and apparel retail sector: 95 papers from different sources were carefully analyzed and organized in a proper data base, and the contents of these papers were used to build a data base of RFID projects in the mentioned sector. The information stored in the data base were then organised in descriptive statistics that depict the situation of RFID projects: the statistics describe the papers we used to build our data base and, more important, the overview of RFID projects that we reviewed, such as the types of products where item-level tags are employed the most (apparel, footwear or accessories), the partition of projects and stores per geographic area and per type of projects (feasibility studies, pilot projects or full deployments). Also, the use cases of RFID pursued were reported, together with respective number of deployments and percentage values, and the same was done with results achieved, categorized in 6 main different clusters. Eventually, a statistics was reported to try to link the RFID use case investigated by a project to its possibility to evolve into a full deployment, and the results of this statistics could greatly help managers to choose the best use cases of RFID to be pursued for achieving competitive advantage.