An ink ribbon assembly is disclosed which includes an ink ribbon, a support for the ink ribbon and data retention means associated with the support. The support, for example, may be a supply spool, a take-up spool, and a rotatable ring. The data retention means may be a nonvolatile memory. Data indicating the ink ribbon characteristics is stored in the memory. Such data may relate to data correcting production variations of ink, the type of ink on the ribbon, and the amount of ribbon left. The ink ribbon assembly is used with a printer device which reads the data from the data retention means, corrects the image printing information in accordance with the read correction data and performs the printing in accordance with the corrected image printing information.