A Web3 Stroll Down Madison Ave
Blockchain / Smart Contracts / Apple/Google Wallets
…Are Changing Retail Forever.
Imagine yourself walking down Madison Avenue in NYC, maybe listening to music or looking at your latest texts, emails, or being sucked into the Social abyss. Now imagine nearing the 7 story Nike House of Innovation. And imagining receiving a notification in your Apple/Google wallet that notifies you the following:
- Your Nike Loyalty points are 326
- You wanted to be notified of any new Nike products that fit into your life journey and they just did a drop at 10am (its 11:15am)
- Nike happens to have new sneakers that would be useful for any upcoming marathons and it can be found on the 4th floor of the NYC Nike store
- You are 3 blocks from the store.
You realize you are 30 min until your next meeting and think with the details provided, you can get to the 4th floor and check out. As you enter the store and make your way up the large escalator to the 2nd floor, Nike sends you another notification:
“There are also new running shorts on the 3rd floor.”
Nike knew that you had purchased running shorts in the past with each pair of shoes. In fact, Nike knows your entire order history whether you purchased Nike products in the 7th story Nike store, at Macys, or online with Nike.com or any other eCommerce vendor. You see, Nike put all their products and customers on the blockchain. This makes it transparent to Nike no matter the retail outlet, or whether you bought it online or in a physical store. And Nike has been given permission by you to market to you on YOUR life journey.
At BambuMeta, we believe Customers have Journeys with brands, but only when they want to engage. Soon brands will only be able to market to customers when customers give them permission, real time. This new age will force brands to really understand YOUR life journey rather than just your journey with their brand.
As you pass the 3rd floor, you grab a pair of running shorts, make your way to the 4th floor and grab the new Nike Air Zoom shoes in your size (as they were already ready for you since the Nike Store shoe Department knew you were coming real time - your phone is Near Field Connected to the cloud after all). You walk up and grab your bag from the attendant. No need to pull out your credit card as you already purchased it on your way into the store when you put it in your Apple/Google wallet cart and bought it on your way into the store.
For your real-time purchase, you are awarded double loyalty points, some of which were used to make this purchase as you reviewed the checkout options and decided to use 50% points and pay the rest with Apple Pay.
All this just in time to make your meeting.
A Blockchain is a Database, but a Database is NOT a Blockchain. None of this can be pulled off in real-time in Database world. Security alone wouldn’t allow it. Why?
- Databases are secure at the entrance to the database and blockchains are secure at each individual block. Security alone will kill this real time scenario.
- 100s if not 1000s of databases are required to be joined real-time to enable this Madison Avenue journey. There isn’t enough computing power in the world to join all the databases fast enough for every shopper real-time. Even if you had permission (which you don’t).
- Every transaction everywhere is accessible anytime (with the right off-chain permissions). We even know the returns, purchases in store, purchases online and purchases through other stores. And it is already “joined” on the blockchain and accessible by you and you only.
- As a result of the data residing on one chain, customers now have the ability to permission their data and notifications to match their life journey and relationship with brands.
The movement of chained data, real-time accessible, highly secure and permissioned by the customer is coming. It’s coming just as sure as the WWW transformed the world in the late 1990s. We are at the moment with Blockchain and AI in the early 2020s. Don’t miss the wave.