Bitcoin has became an international sensation, while crypto-currencies still lack the fundamental attributes of money. Blockchain technology, which is beginning to gain significant attention, possesses far more future potential than Bitcoin. Let’s see how blockchain can have an impact in retail value chain: my top 3 use cases of blockchain.
Provenance: restore customer confidence
Tracking Provenance tops my list. Imagine a grocery retailer specializing in curated organic food products, wanting to shore up confidence among its customers that it provides what it says. That the organic labels on its products are just not marketing tool and gimmick to charge higher prices. This is where blockchain could come in handy, by providing ways and means of tracking the journey of a product from an organic farm to the store. This would raise the confidence of the customers in their products to a large extent.
Counterfeiting: control deteriorating value of genuine luxury products
Proliferation of fake products in mainstream is so rampant these days that it’s almost important to identify and control. The affects are detrimental especially in case of luxury consumer goods, primarily leading to deterioration in the value of genuine products. A blockchain solution case reverse the trend by allowing the customers to scan a code permanently etched into the product and have access to the entire history of the product. The history includes the entire chain of ownership – the country of origin, every touchpoint in the lifespan of the product as it moves through the supply chain from farm to fork.
B2B payments in cross-border transactions (global supply chain)
There is an increasing popularity of crypto-currencies and the move towards acceptance of crypto-currencies as real cash is slow, but surely it’s headed to the right direction. If acceptance of crypto-currency becomes main-stream, then that would be a real game changer, leading to a real dis-intermediation in the global supply chain. The positive cost implication of this would be far reaching, in the long run. 28 banks are now working on how they can use cryptocurrencies for cross-border transactions which will facilitate more business. It’s definitely worth a wait for now.
References:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blockchain-technology-poised-fundamentally-change-retail-liron-langer
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nikkibaird/2017/08/09/blockchain-and-retail-four-opportunities/#33f3330b72bf
https://www.accenture.com/in-en/insight-highlights-cgs-blockchain-cpg-and-retail-industries
https://www.cognizant.com/whitepapers/retail-opening-the-doors-to-blockchain-codex2879.pdf
Photograph (Feature Image): courtesy pexels.com
https://pixabay.com/en/block-chain-data-record-blocks-3052119/
