D3.7 A Structured Collection on Information and Literature on Technological and Usability Aspects of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Untitled SURVEY: METHODOLOGY AND STANDARD VALUES

Survey: methodology and standard values

The Institute of Computer Science and Social Studies of the Albert-Ludwig University Freiburg has been carried out an on-line survey from November 2004 to February 2005 regarding the economic use of RFID in German companies. This study is part of the series “Electronic Commerce Enquête” (ECE) focussing on the development of information and communication technology and its economic use (IC 2005). The objective of this on-line study is to give as far as possible an overview of first applications, planning and estimation of German enterprises already using RFID or where RFID is significant for their business. These enterprises are of the branches retail, processing business, logistics as well as other services and suppliers for RFID components and solutions. The questionnaire has been addressed to decision-maker of the highest hierarchy level. 68 out of 438 addressed enterprises have answered the questionnaire. The survey was carried out electronically. The statistical values have been calculated based on the number of answers for each question. Identifiable data regarding a person or an enterprise have not been collected. The distribution of the 68 enterprises regarding the branches is shown in .

Figure : Distribution of enterprises belonging to a specific branch

In order to classify these 68 enterprises, the numbers of permanent employees and the annual turnover in millions of Euro have been collected. The determination of small and medium enterprises (SME), which represent 98% of all enterprises in the European Union (EU), has taken place according to the Official Journal of the European Union L123 (EU 2004). Regarding this method, 40% of the consulted enterprises are identifies as SME. This value is less than the average in the EU. The explanation is that only those enterprises are addressed which have already reached a specific progress in the use or testing of RFID. In addition to advertisements on web sides, e-mail newsletter and in journal by branches, enterprises listed in the Hoppenstedt database for SME has been addresses individually. The relative big share of large-scale enterprise stems from the fact that large-scale enterprises are able to test a technology with sufficient funds at the beginning of its economic use while SME adapt an established and matured technology with a delay. This corresponds with the experiences gained by the introduction of other information and communication technology, e.g. the Internet (Sackmann, Strüker 2005).