Mobile Sales Assistant An NFCbased product information system for retailers Stephan Karpischek, Florian Michahelles
Florian Resatsch
Information Management, DMTEC ETH Zurich Zurich, Switzerland {skarpischek, fmichahelles}@ethz.ch
Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik TU München Munich, Germany
[email protected]
Elgar Fleisch Operations Management, Institute of Technology Management University of St. Gallen Information Management, DMTEC ETH Zurich St. Gallen / Zurich, Switzerland
[email protected] Abstract—The Mobile Sales Assistant (MSA) is a mobile product information system for retailers based on a combination of Near Field Communication (NFC) and the Electronic Product Code (EPC). The MSA aims at optimizing the sales process in retail stores. It enables shop assistants to check the availability and stock information of products directly at the Point of Sale (PoS) with an NFCenabled mobile phone. Thus, shop assistants can inform their customers without letting them wait, which might increase customer satisfaction and sales. This paper presents a prototype, which has been implemented for a clothing department store, and evaluates its acceptance with a focus group of shop assistants. Keywords—Electronic Product Code; Mobile Information Systems; Near Field Communication; Retail Business
I. INTRODUCTION The main vision behind the Internet of Things (IoT) is to connect physical objects to related information from the digital world [11]. Successful commercial applications are in the area of supply chain management and logistics and use the Electronic Product Code (EPC), an RFIDbased solution for automated product identification [6]. Our approach is to integrate this upcoming industry standard with the consumer oriented technology Near Field Communication (NFC) [17]. Despite current compatibility problems, which are discussed in detail in [1], the combination of these two RFIDbased technologies promises interesting applications for mobile product information systems. Many mobile applications for supporting consumers in the shopping process use mobile devices with optical barcode readers, e.g. [12, 1415]. MyGrocer [16] was an early ubiquitous computing application for the grocery sector using RFID.
The Metro Group Future Store initiative [13] attached digital shopping assistants based on RFID to shopping carts in 2004. Applications for consumers using the combination of NFC and EPC have also been proposed: APriori [2] is an ubiquitous product rating system; the Mobile Prosumer [3] is a generic mobile product information service. We also see high business potential for retailers in mobile services, which optimize the sales process in department stores. A mobile product information system connected to the company's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can bring relevant information to the Point of Sale, which help customers decide. With growing NFC penetration and item level tagging of products it is likely that information services based on automated product identification with EPC will become more relevant [49]. Yet it is not known how the human resources in retail, i.e. the sales personnel, will react. Our assumption is, that with such a system, shop assistants can better inform customers about availability of products and give them more product information in general. Since the shop assistant can access this information with a mobile device, he/she can stay with the customer. This avoids long waiting times for the customer and increases customer satisfaction and, potentially, sales. The Mobile Sales Assistant (MSA), a prototypical implementation targeted at clothing department stores, was presented first in [5]. In this paper we present an evaluation of the MSA in a focus group with 10 shop assistants, which took place in Berlin in October 2007. Thus, we evaluate our assumptions and the acceptance of an NFCbased product information system from a retailer's point of view. The paper is structured as follows. First, we describe a typical scenario in a department store and the existing problems. Then, we present the MSA and give a short introduction to EPC. Following, we present the technical
implementation of the prototype. After that, the evaluation method and results are presented. We conclude with a short outlook to future work. II.SCENARIO AT THE POINT OF SALE Often encountered problems in clothing department stores are outofstock occurrences (OOS), misplaced items, or late replenishment. The availability of items in the right size, cut or color is important for customers. Customers demanding more and higher quality product information is also a general trend. Nevertheless, in department stores the sales staff is often busy conducting store operations. The above mentioned problems demand time consuming processes and high workload [4]. The following scenario is typical in clothing department stores and costs a lot of staff time. A customer has found an interesting article but can not find the right size or color. He/ she needs to find a shop assistant, which he/she can ask for help. The shop assistant can look for the wanted item physically on the shelves or in a backstore. He/she can also use a personal computer to find information about availability of the wanted item. In any case, this process interrupts the dialog between the customer and the shop assistant. Often, the customer has to wait for the shop assistant, who is searching for a single item or checking the availability of a wanted product. Waiting customers become impatient and sometimes leave the store. Potential sales may get lost. OOS situations, and insufficient product information are frustrating experiences and will affect customer satisfaction. Customer loyalty may decrease and in the worst case may be completely lost [4]. III.MOBILE SALES ASSISTANT The MSA is an NFCbased mobile information system, which aims to improve the quality of the described sales process. It enables shop assistants to check for stock of articles directly at the Point of Sale (PoS). If the shop assistant touches the NFCtagged label of the wanted article (or of a similar article or the shelf) with her NFCenabled mobile phone, information about availability of the wanted item and related products, e.g. in other sizes or colors, is taken from the ERPsystem and shown on the mobile phone display. With the given information, sales staff can immediately inform customers about availability, and single items can be found faster. The shop assistant can stay with the customer through the whole process. This saves staff time, and customers do not have to wait, which increases customer satisfaction. If the customer uses the application with his/her own mobile phone, he/she doesn’t need any assistance at all and can easily check for availability of products him/herself.
IV.ELECTRONIC PRODUCT CODE Currently, the International (former European) Article Number (EAN) is used on billions of barcodes on products worldwide. The defined successor to this standard for item level product identification is the EPC, designed to be stored on RFID tags. The EPC is the central component of the EPC Network, an infrastructure for automated identification of products. In addition to company and product information, the Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN), which is also encoded in the EAN, the EPC stores serialized numbers (serialized GTIN, or SGTIN) to identify single items [9]. On the RFID tags, only the EPC is stored as a unique identifier. Additional information about the product is retrieved from EPC Information Services (EPCIS), various data sources, which can be looked up using the Object Naming Service (ONS). The EPC Network was originally developed at the Auto ID Center to optimize supply chain processes. Now, development of the EPC and the EPC Network is organized by EPCglobal Inc. [7]. A detailed overview of the EPC development can be found in [6]. The combination of EPC, an industry standard based on RFID, and NFC, a consumeroriented approach to using RFID technology, offers significant benefits, but both technologies have not been developed to be compatible with each other. Instead, EPC in its current standardization uses frequencies in the UHF band – because of the higher read range – whereas NFC uses only one frequency in the HF band to be compatible with existing smartcard standards. Various issues which need to be solved to overcome this incompatibility are discussed in [1]. V.PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION The MSA prototype targets department stores of clothing retailers. It shows information about availability of products in various sizes and colors, and in other stores. The software implementation consists of three components: A server application, a client application on the NFCenabled mobile phone, and product labels with NFCtags on which the EPC is stored. A. Server application The serverside of the MSA is a web application with a standard web server and a data backend. For the prototype, the application was implemented using PHP and MySQL. In a production environment the server application would be connected to a gateway server, which gets its data from the company's ERP system. B. Client application The client application is implemented in J2ME using the Nokia SDK. It should work on all phones which implement the Contactless Communication API [18]. For the prototype the software is installed on a Nokia 6131 NFC mobile phone. The internet connection to the server is established over GPRS.
C. Tagged products The EPC used for tagging products is a SGTIN in 96 bit format (SGTIN96), one of the formats defined by EPC standards [9]. It is stored in Unique Resource Identifier (URI) format in an NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) message on the RFID tag, according to the NFC Forum standard specification Record Type Definition (RTD) for URIs [8]. Fig. 1 shows an example for a SGTIN in URI format. D. Process description When scanning a tagged product, the MSA client application on the mobile phone extracts the EPC from the scanned NDEF message and builds a URI for a web resource with the company and product identifying part (GTIN) of the EPC as a parameter. Then, it opens the mobile phone's web browser with this URI. Fig. 2 shows an example for a web resource's URI. The web browser requests the corresponding resource from the server application with an HTTP GET request. Information about the product's availability is then displayed on the mobile client in a standard HTML website optimized for the mobile phone's small display. Detailed information about the scanned product and related products can be accessed via hypertext references. Fig. 3 shows an overview of the system. Fig. 4 shows screenshots of the MSA client application on a Nokia 6131 NFC. urn:epc:id:sgtin:0404770.5407273.400 Figure 1. Example of a SGTIN in URI format.
http://msa.kpi.at/msa.php?gtin=04047705407273 Figure 2. Example of the web URI with GTIN as parameter.
Database
NFC tagged product
ERP Scan EPC
HTTP
Mobile client
Server
Person searching for the right size Figure 3. Mobile Sales Assistant system overview.
Figure 4. Screenshots of the MSA client application.
VI.EVALUATION A. Evaluation design The MSA was evaluated in a qualitative analysis using the method of focus groups, a form of moderated group interview. The method is useful for exploring people’s knowledge and experiences. Focus group interviews are particularly suited for obtaining several different perspectives about the same topic. The sample for our evaluation, 10 shop assistants, were preselected in telephone interviews and consisted of sellers of groceries, consumer electronics, white goods and media. There were 5 male and 5 female sales people. They were presented two NFCbased applications. The first application was the Mobile Prosumer, a mobile product recommendation system, the second the Mobile Sales Assistant. The concepts of the applications were first presented on paper to evaluate the general feelings of the shop assistants towards the MSA. The shop assistants could try a different prototype application with a Nokia 6131 NFC mobile phone to get a feeling for using NFC technology. The focus group took 120 minutes, it was recorded on video and transcribed. Results of the evaluation of the Mobile Prosumer and analysis of a consumer focus group can be found in [10]. B. Results In general, shop assistants had mixed feelings about the MSA. Some stated that the technology will come and that this will be the future. Half of the focus group was familiar with RFID technology, they knew e.g. the Metro Future Store. Nearly all of the group found NFC and the MSA extremely easy to use. Some were uncertain about who uses the mobile phone, the customer or the shop assistant. Most shop assistants did not see particular benefits of the MSA. They stated that there is not much difference to the same process using a personal computer. Some sales staff is not allowed to use mobile phones in a department store. They stated that to customers using a telephone during the sales process would look unfamiliar and not serious. Some stated that they were able to give the wanted information without looking it up, and that the MSA would interfere with
the regular sales process. Some also stated that the internet connection was rather slow.
[2]
C. Interpretation The results can be interpreted that shop assistants fear to be replaced by a mobile product information system like the MSA. They are therefore reluctant to accept and use such a system. On the other hand, this interpretation supports our initial assumption that the MSA will optimize the sales process for retailers.
[3] [4] [5] [6]
VII.CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK In this paper, we presented the MSA, a mobile product information system for retailers based on NFC and EPC. Analyzing a typical shopping process in a clothing department store, our assumption was, that the MSA could optimize the sales process, helping the shop assistants to provide faster and better information and increasing customer satisfaction. The evaluation in a focus group with 10 shop assistants showed, that sales people do not see benefits of the MSA and are reluctant to use it. This result can be interpreted that shop assistants fear being replaced by systems like the MSA. We think that this result supports our initial assumption that the MSA optimizes sales processes. It may be good for retailers to focus on applications targeting sales personnel. They are relatively cheap and easy to implement with connections to existing databases and NFCenabled mobile phones as user devices. With such a system implemented, the information needs of sales personnel and customers can be clearly determined. The feedback can be used to further optimize the system. More evaluation is needed. In a next step, we would like to evaluate the MSA at the management level of retailers. Additional information can be displayed, e.g. recommendations for crossselling. Once the application is mature, it can also be offered to customers for installation. Also more work is needed to optimize the MSA from a technical point of view. The internet connection over GPRS was considered too slow. Users had to wait for the information to be displayed. NFCenabled devices with UMTS or wireless LAN would bring higher speed and thus, higher usability. Authentication mechanisms and privacy issues need to be addressed. A more advanced framework for connecting mobile phones to the EPCIS is the Mobile IoT toolkit, which was presented in [7]. Using this toolkit, the MSA could be integrated into an existing EPCIS. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The work on this paper was partly supported by AutoID Labs. REFERENCES [1]
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