Transforming Transactional Marketing of Retailers

Our main idea is to make a blockchain of customers for a supermarket which is shared amongst its various outlets along with the accumulation of credit. Our proposed system includes the customer credits provided by the retailer upon shopping above a specified amount, to be accumulated in the customer's block. Collectively, such blocks form a blockchain of the customer accounts altogether for the company, which is shared amongst the network of the company’s outlet present in various cities to maintain a properly distributed ledger. The system will allow us to:

1. Make credits called Value-coins with a fixed limit. This limit of how many Value-coins are to be generated in total is decided by the retailer based on the profit margin.
2. Create an autonomous private Blockchain with rules on how many Value-coins will be issued to the customer on spending how much money.
3. Transactions are validated and details of transactions are added to the customer block.

Our project also aims at simplifying the customer experience when it comes to shopping. The customers today have to stand for several minutes in the cash counter to pay their bills. Such a situation can be avoided by enabling the customer to pay soon after they have finished adding items to their cart. This can be done by enabling the customer to scan the barcodes of the product using their phones and finally pay the total amount.

Project Partners:

1. Ashmani Singh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashmani-singh-28a485128/
2. Akash Prasad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akash-prasad-225723148/
3. Harsh Raj: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harsh-raj-b4089153/
4. Arup Das: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arup-das-90033a153/

Papers Published based on this work:

1. Enhancing retail business and customer experience using blockchain approach, DOI: 10.1504/IJBC.2020.111573 International Journal of Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, 2020 Vol.1 No.3, pp.273 - 285 Accessible at: https://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticle.php?artid=111573
   Free Copy Available Here.

2. Transforming Transactional Marketing of Retailers Using Blockchain Approach. Paper presented and published in International Conference on Sustainable Computing, Technology and Management (SUSCOM 2019) held in February 26-28, 2019 at Amity University, Rajasthan, India. Accessible at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3350886

Link to Report :

The final report can be found here.