Key Concepts: Getting Up to Speed on Digital ID and Connected Products

Originally published on Customerland.net on May 20th, 2025

The rapid growth of connected products and increasing sustainability legal requirements have many businesses wondering where to start.  While opportunities abound, as an emerging industry, there is naturally a limited understanding about fundamental connected products concepts.  To help you take advantage of the opportunities connected products provide, we’ve put together a list of key concepts that we see businesses struggle with the most.

What Exactly is a Connected Product?

A Connected Product is a physical item that is connected to online information about the item, its environment, its users, and related services through the internet.  The connection between the item and the online information is done through a “data carrier”, usually in the form of a QR code, NFC tag, RFID tag, optical carrier, etc.  As part of a larger product-centric ecosystem (ex. which includes other services like repair and resale, and the repair and resale data that is tied to the individual item), connected products support new cost saving efficiencies, business intelligence, and revenue opportunities for businesses while more effectively addressing consumer needs and preferences.

Add “Product-centricity” to Your Lexicon

Businesses and marketers have long built their goals, strategies, tactics, and metrics around “customer-centricity”, but connected products require an additional product-centric perspective to capitalize on ROI opportunities and extract the most insight from connected products data.

Differentiate between Consumer and Customer

Connected products enable businesses to connect with both customers and consumers, and the distinction is important.  Customers buy products from the business, consumers use the products.  When they are not the same people, such as when a customer gifts an item to another person (the item’s consumer), there is an opportunity to turn consumers into customers as connected products provide businesses with the unique opportunity to engage directly with consumers through an item they possess (i.e. an acquisition audience).  Connected products also facilitate customer retention efforts, so businesses should have different goals, strategies, and tactics for these different audiences.

A View Far Beyond the Point-of-Sale

Barring returns, product reviews, and customer satisfaction surveys, businesses have historically had very little understanding about what happens to their products after they are sold.  Connected products data can be used to create a deep understanding of a business’s products’ entire lifecycle journey.  It can also be used to develop more informed pricing strategies, enhance buyer profiles, improve anti-counterfeiting capabilities, and support sustainability and traceability compliance tracking.

Product Data Is Not Customer Data

While there are parallels, product data is distinctly different from customer data.  Product data is often public to begin with, and is not subject to data privacy laws.  Throughout an individual item’s lifetime, it will be scanned, adding to its data story, by supply chain vendors, distributors, shoppers, buyers, original owners, resellers, secondary owners, authenticators, repairers, sorters, and recyclers.  Scans will happen through both automated and manual means.  Therefore it is important to think of the individual product as being independent of any single owner to fully understand its lifecycle.  If you want connected product data to be tied to individual customers, this needs to be part of the business’s connected products data strategy.  Distinguishing between the different types of scans will be critical to accurately capture key lifecycle milestones and to harvest the most useful product insights.

Lifetime Item Data Collection

The data associated with each individual item begins with materials sourcing and continues throughout its entire lifecycle.  As businesses have yet to firmly establish the value to consumers of engaging with connected products, businesses will need to educate consumers on how to scan different carrier types, and provide meaningful reasons to do so.  Although the lifespan of the average article of clothing is about 3 years, some data carrier technologies allow for data capture for well over 20 years, providing businesses with the ability to learn over decades.  How this data can be used to solve business challenges is also expected to evolve.

True In-Moment Marketing

Consumer interactions only happen while the item is in the physical possession of the consumer while shopping or post-purchase when they choose to interact with the item and the branded consumer experience (i.e. a branded landing page).  Unlike most marketing communications, these are consumer-initiated (not business-initiated) moments when the consumer wants to interact with the businesses.  The business’s ability to address the reason for the interaction is an opportunity to strengthen the business-consumer relationship and improve the likelihood of a future purchase.

Product Data Must Be Made Public

For most businesses, all data are closely guarded assets.  So it is not surprising the public sharing of any data runs contrary to many established policies and practices, even if that data is often already on the product’s label and the ecommerce site.  To comply with laws like the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (“ESPR”), data sharing requirements like the Digital Product Passport (“DPP”), and California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act, businesses will need to reset their expectations about how their data will be shared.  This will require revisions to policies and processes, and, for many businesses, will require the creation of a data sharing board that can evaluate and approve data sharing in a controlled and efficient manner.

Survivability of Product Data

Access to product data by consumers and key product lifecycle suppliers must be designed to survive the end of operations of all businesses and service providers.  Accounting for this will help fulfill your business’s sustainability and transparency commitments, and comply with legal requirements within the ESPR and DPP.  While the EU’s current plan does not include a government run data repository, businesses should have a secondary (i.e. external) data storage solution in place that will allow for continued access by recyclers, consumers, and other key audiences, if a business ceases operations.

Understanding these key concepts will help you and your business be better prepared to capitalize on the opportunities provided but Digital ID and connected products.  For more information on Digital ID and Connected Products, check out FarSight’s blog here.

To download our latest research:  On-Demand Brand: European Luxury Apparel & Footwear, Building Engaging & Profitable Digital ID & Connected Products Programs, click here.

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