In retail, unlike in wholesale, consumers’ opinions and interactions play vital roles in the rise and fall of the market. It is the consumers’ opinions, turning into demands, that affect the overall understocking or overstocking of shelves. This opinion now costs about $400 billion in sales losses annually. With an ever growing number of retailers offering all imaginable goods, buyers are becoming pickier and sometimes weary of the constant need to make choices. But,what if options get easier? What if personal preferences, age, financial ability or diet restrictions are taken into account by the retailer who sifts out the chaff and offers only the best, most suitable options? What if before you actually buy something, you get users’ feedback about the item without staging a time consuming Google investigation? And what if you have the opportunity to get a reward for information inputs on your products of interest? That certainly makes it worth a personal contribution to the market.
The Power of OSA DC and Consumer Interaction is About to Lead to a New Page of Retail Development
With OSA DC input, opportunity is in the offing. OSA Decentralized is the first AI-driven marketplace providing real-time solutions to retailers, producers and consumers. OSA DC with its synergy of artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies with smart contract functionality ensures product data transparency and smart online assistant services making it easy for consumers to make grounded choices. Consumers’ input, in turn, helps manufacturers produce products of higher quality and retailers improve their sales strategy avoiding overstocking and understocking.
It’s clear OSA DC provides a win-win solution for both manufacturers and retailers involved. Let’s consider how the platform changes the future of the retail industry by interacting with consumers. Customers provide all types of data: personal information like age, diet requirements, health conditions, maybe their profession or hobbies; contact information (e-mail, phone number, place of residence); their price range for certain products; product feedbacks and preferences; feedbacks on services in various stores, etc.
Let’s summarize how the platform interacts with consumers to change the future of the retail industry. Artificial intelligence processes the pieces of customer data and establishes certain user patterns both as individual for a single consumer and as common for a group of people with similar requests and requirements. These patterns influence the list of future products offered to the consumer. Artificial intelligence defines decision-making principles for different groups of consumers and passes this information to manufacturers and retailers to adapt their business plan by adjusting price policies and making reasoned decisions on the importance of the overall demand for particular products.
But what does this mean for the common consumer? This means platform users’ preferences, requirements and abilities are the key factors influencing major production decisions. Blockchain technology ensures the registry of the product lifecycle at every stage eliminating cases of product loss, damages or improper storage (which for some products can equal 70% per batch). This may seem to not affect consumers, but that is a delusion. In fact, product price usually consists of the following ‘ingredients: the product net value, packaging, employees’ wages, marketing fee, logistics fee, brand profit, and ,what is particularly important for this discussion, the cost of damaged or lost goods. It is not the manufacturers or retailers who pay for the production malfunctions but the consumers. With the OSA DC platform, users gain the power to influence both the product range and the pricing policy.
Thanks to OSA DC, consumers! By sharing your background data, likes or dislikes, and reasoned feedback on certain goods, you not only help retailers earn more money, you also help yourself save time and money however contradictory this may sound. No more random shopping, no more goods of questionable quality, no more dancing to the tune of cunning salesmen and overpaying for products. It’s time to stop, take a deep breath and become a smart shopper. Imagine buying as a well-adjusted process bringing you delight and pure excitement from the purchases rather than headaches and return postage. It’s as easy as buying hot coffee with a freshly baked muffin on your way to the office, a simple pleasure without bitter aftertaste.
The reward and referral opportunities could make it a second, part-time job for committed shoppers since they could get reward OSA coins to be used for B2C extra services, subscriptions to special offers, incentives from retailers, and later, when the platform grows, an option to use these coins for product purchasing.
Why Retail Revolutionizing is So Important
Let’s learn a few things about fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) retail revolutions to understand why the above listed changes are so crucial.
The first wave of the FMCG revolution was called the Power of Brands. When famous brands appeared, they became an important part of mass culture with their constant presence in media advertising. After they had expanded their product range providing supporting attributes to their core product and sometimes going far over their initial niche, they took a large portion of the market by facilitating product choices. Simultaneously, consumers had to surrender product comparison and ingredients control.
The second wave of FMCG, called Power of Retail Chains, started with the appearance of big marketplaces providing a great variety of products in the same place and making shopping less time consuming. But, consumers had to surrender price control and alternative product choice. Both of these waves facilitated the shopping process. They also made consumers give up some of their decision making principles.
Now, there is a third wave of FMCG revolution driven by technology. The IT sector allows consumers to investigate any product offered, and thus, regain full control over their shopping decision making. OSA DC, however, goes a leap further providing a ready solution involving all key criteria of product assessment by consumers.
Shopping practises depend, mostly, on 9 buyers’ concerns; they are:
- Trust in brand/product/seller
- Trust in product composition and ingredients
- Trust in proper product storage and handling
- Easy to find products
- Easy to select products
- Easy to choose products
- Price control (price awareness)
- Shopping is a routine
- Grocery shopping is time consuming
Taking the above listed points into account, OSA DC has grouped them according to the technological modules dealing with these concerns.
The Blockchain with its registry of manufacturing, transportation and handling procedures ensures trust in product/ingredients as well as in storage and handling.
The Product Master Data Catalogue deals with individual consumer’s preferences processing them and linking to a specific product by matching the search criteria ensuring trust in product/ingredients and providing an easy to select product.
The Dynamic ratings system helps make an unbiased choice of brand/product/seller.
The Personal AI operated digital assistant deals with the concerns as easy find/choose product, price control, shopping is a routine and grocery shopping is time consuming by accumulating, analyzing and processing individual buyer’s information.
What is revolutionary in OSA DC? The hybrid OSA DC platform combines the advantages of online and traditional retail complementing the decision making process by the personal AI operated assistant and facing all 9 top consumers’ concerns.
The OSA DC solution is developed with trust and reliability in mind and supports the mutual benefit of the parties involved:
1. Save money for retailers, manufacturers and consumers as informed production and consumption reduces overstocking and excessive shopping
2. Save time for consumers by speeding up the search and choice of products
3. Secure consumer health by protecting them from unhealthy food choices
Utopia or the Future of Retail
With OSA DC, expansion plans for changing the overall retail industry are around the corner. 2018 is the year of the platform’s introduction into the markets in Japan, South Korea, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine and China. More European and Latin American countries are next in line.
Let’s imagine OSA DC has spread all over the globe, with every manufacturer, retailer and buyer doing their job. The overall analysis of consumer demands made by smart AI driven assistants results in the decline of materials and budget overruns. The price policy is controlled and competitive since it no longer includes hidden fees to compensate for overproduction caused by the lost, stolen or damaged goods. Production is controlled by demand, while demand is controlled by smart shopping principles. In general, it is a ‘no’ to overproduction, based on economic reasons, not to mention the environmental crisis it causes, and it is a contributing factor to poverty.
All data on production and delivery stages are transparent and secure, registered by blockchain technology ensuring the efficient interaction of all the parties involved and eliminating hidden money waste. The corruption in retail industry declines and advertising loses its position thanks to the unbiased ratings system. While consumers enjoy product transparency, spending money on exactly those things they can use, manufacturers and retailers exploit the results of OSA DC’s artificial intelligence revealing the factors influencing customers’ behavior and competitors’ prices.
The platform, designed for the retail evolution’s next stage, can not only ease the consumers’ daily shopping issues, but in fact save lives. If you’re a person suffering from an allergy to a list of products like honey, nuts, milk, kiwi, cinnamon, etc., it is crucial to avoid these products. When you need to buy biscuits or pie, you need to check the ingredients first. What if you’re buying food for a week for a family of 5 people with each having a different kind of allergy? You can spend hours learning the ingredients on all food packages without thet OSA DC platform to do this boring work for you and giving you a reward to boot. Try to guess how much people have health problems requiring special diets: diabetics, people with impaired metabolism, cardiovascular diseases, liver and kidney dysfunctions,and so on. Some doctors say there are no healthy people on the planet now; there are only those who are poorly examined. With this in mind, the importance of the OSA DC contribution to the health industry cannot be overestimated.
Expansion plans open new horizons for people who travel. From now on, it won’t be a challenge for consumers visiting foreign countries to find anything they need without surrendering their product’s standards. It’s especially important when it comes to medical supplies. The language barrier, ignorance of a country’s market and its prices, or poor geographical orientation won’t make any difference. This is globalization in retail industry.
Scaling the platform could actually lead to a new era of retail industry solving many more general and personal challenges. It may seem utopian, but it may well be our bright future.
