Blockchain makes you a better consumer
Industries nowadays are fully developed and saturated with new entrants left and right. There are many systems established, from how to conduct employee interviews to how Mandarin oranges should enter the ports of Singapore. The new frontier for these multi-million-dollar industries is how to minimise inefficiencies while scaling.
How do you store more user data while protecting against breaches?
How do you trace the origins of products in less than a minute?
How do you verify authenticity in real-time?
At the core of these questions is the customer experience. Brands deal with different kinds of shoppers whose pain points can be solved with the integration of blockchain technology. Specifically, there are five types of customers examined below:
The Ninjas, The Activists, The Hypochondriacs, The Paranoid and The Cheapskates.
The Ninjas
These stealthy, ad-blocking customers want to go under the radar and maintain their privacy. Aggregated personal data is proving to be a recipe for breach and disaster, and companies with huge online communities have fallen under all the weight. Blockchain technology takes a refreshing approach with its distributed ledger as cryptocurrency transactions provide parties pseudonymity. That is, wallet addresses are not traced to personal information of the sender nor receiver. The technology enables this level of privacy while still allowing real-time verification across the network.
The Activists
These are shoppers who want transparency especially for controversial industries like diamond mining. In some African countries, rough diamonds have funded the operations of militias. The United Nations introduced the Kimberley Process in 2003 to prevent “conflict diamonds” from being shipped and traded. Since 2015, London-based startup Everledger has encrypted the lifetime journey of over 2 million diamonds through its Diamond Time-Lapse Protocol. IBM recently partnered giants in the precious metals and jewelry industries to launch the TrustChain Initiative. Customers of participating retailers can trace the history of six styles of diamonds and gold engagement rings.
The Hypochondriacs
It may look safe, but is it really? Specifically when it comes to what they eat, these shoppers can never be too sure. 2018 saw an increased number of food recalls in the U.S., from Cargill’s 157,000 pounds of beef to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks and even 200 million eggs from a suspected Salmonella outbreak. Walmart introduced a Food Traceability Initiative powered by IBM’s Food Trust blockchain-powered solution and executed in collaboration with its many suppliers. With a digital end-to-end encryption, food can be traced to its source from 7 days to just 2.2 seconds.
The Paranoid
Shoppers who constantly worry about counterfeits can rest easy with blockchain technology. The pharmaceutical industry faces problems of fake or substandard medical products sold to low-and-middle-income countries. The World Health Organization estimated these cases in 2017 to be 1 in 10 products. Last month, the multinational Merck successfully obtained patents to use blockchain and AI for integrity verification purposes and avoid counterfeit drugs. The luxury goods market has also benefitted from the technology. Swiss company Luxochain SA created a blockchain certification service to guarantee the authenticity of goods.
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Davide Baldi, CEO of Luxochain said:
We want to build a better world, where counterfeit and stolen goods can be easily identified by a mobile phone.
The Cheapskates
You fit right into this segment if you collect points for purchases. CrowdTwist, a loyalty and engagement solutions provider, reported that 82% of Gen X were members of one or more loyalty programmes. Financial services multinational American Express has jumped on the blockchain wagon by tying its rewards points to a distributed ledger, thereby allowing merchants to offer rewards on their own channels instead of only those owned by Amex. This move into blockchain technology is a win-win situation because it increases efficiency among merchants and Amex’s systems while providing more in-depth purchase data from customers.
Chris Cracchiolo, Vice President of Global Membership Rewards, said:
… we can track down to the point how and where points were awarded, the promotion they were awarded for, and that provides us with a lot of great insight.
