When large retailers like Tesco, Metro Group and Wal-Mart demand that suppliers be RFID-ready, those suppliers listen. They don't have much choice if they want to do business with the retailing giants.

But suppliers feel the pain -- lots of it. Implementing RFID is expensive. And for suppliers, it can be hard to justify the expense when it's the retailer who reaps the most immediate and biggest benefits.

Suppliers are not rushing to implement RFID. They're being pulled, pushed and prodded into it. So although RFID adoption inevitably will grow, it is likely to be in fits and starts, and perhaps at a slower pace during the first half of 2004 than initially anticipated as suppliers grapple with implementation plans and find the money to undertake RFID.

Red Herring has an interesting article that outlines the pain (i.e., the expense) suppliers are feeling, and some of the push-back they are giving retailers.