Annual grocery sales are on the rise in all regions worldwide, with an emphasis of fast, fresh prepared foods. Additionally, customer understanding has increased for the source of the food, the provider’s sustainability initiative, and overall freshness. Grocery retailers who provide visibility and can certify their products according to certain standards will win the trust and loyalty of consumers.

“Blockchain can help deliver confidence to grocer’s customers, and build and retain trust and loyalty,” said Joanne Joliet, senior research director at Gartner. “Grocery retailers are trialling and looking to adopt blockchain technology to provide transparency for their products. Additionally, understanding and pinpointing the product source quickly may be used internally, for example to identify products included in a recall.”

Blockchain appears as an ideal technology to foster transparency and visibility along the food supply chain. Encryption capabilities on the food source, quality, transit temperature and freshness can be used to ensure that the data is accurate and will give confidence to both consumers and retailers.

Some grocers have already been experimenting with blockchain and are developing best practices. For example, Walmart is now requiring suppliers of leafy greens to implement a farm-to-store tracking system based on blockchain. Other grocers, such as Unilever and Nestlé, are also using blockchain to trace food contamination.

“As grocers are being held to higher standards of visibility and traceability they will lead the way with the development of blockchain, but we expect it will extend to all areas of retail,” Ms Joliet said. “Similar to how the financial services industry has used blockchain, grocers will evolve best practices as they apply blockchain capabilities to their ecosystem. Grocers also have the opportunity to be part of the advancement of blockchain as they develop new use cases for important causes for health, safety and sustainability.”

Gartner clients can read more in the report: “Predicts 2019: Delivering Contextualized Customer Experiences Will Be Key for Unified Retail Commerce Success.” More information on customer experience strategy can be found in the Gartner CRM and Customer Experience Strategy Primer for 2019.

Gartner Customer Experience & Technologies Summits
Customer experience trends will be further discussed at the Gartner Customer Experience & Technologies Summits 2019 taking place 22-23 May in London and 17-18 June in Sydney. Follow news and updates from the event on Twitter at #GartnerCX.

About Gartner
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world’s leading research and advisory company and a member of the S&P 500. We equip business leaders with indispensable insights, advice and tools to achieve their mission-critical priorities and build the successful organizations of tomorrow.

Our unmatched combination of expert-led, practitioner-sourced and data-driven research steers clients toward the right decisions on the issues that matter most. We are a trusted advisor and objective resource for more than 15,000 organizations in more than 100 countries — across all major functions, in every industry and organization size.

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