Market Strategies Finds Nearly Half Of Americans Not Interested In School RFID Monitoring

LIVONIA -- When it comes to mobile security for people, only half of Americans are interested in monitoring unauthorized visitors at schools and day care centers using radio frequency identification, according to a national "Machine-to-Machine" study released by the Livonia research consultancy Market Strategies International.

"As we send our kids back to school, this seemed a bit puzzling -- we hypothesized it would be higher," said George Wilkerson, executive vice president of the communications division at Market Strategies. "What we learned that helps explain this finding is that 50 percent of consumers view tracking people as an invasion of privacy and 61 percent believe the technology provides a false sense of security."

The study revealed that 51 percent of consumers are interested in a GPS locator for family members, a GPS locator for pets and identity monitoring at schools and day care centers. Interest in geo-fencing for pets came in at 45 percent, followed by geo-fencing for family members at 39 percent.

According to Wilkerson, technology is ahead of the consumer adoption curve, and there is a tremendous opportunity for companies to create loyal customers by helping them understand emerging M2M technologies and their associated benefits.

"Overall, half of consumers indicate some level of interest in M2M solutions that can track people and pets. To pave the way for adoption of these security technologies and applications, savvy companies will pursue aggressive education campaigns," he said.

Market Strategies interviewed a national sample of 1,500 consumers aged 18 and older between June 21 and July 1. Respondents were recruited from an opt-in online panel of United States adults and were interviewed online. The data were weighted by age, gender and census region to match the demographics of the US population. Due to its opt-in nature, this online panel (like most others) does not yield a random probability sample of the target population. As such, it is not possible to compute a margin of error or to statistically quantify the accuracy of projections.

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