• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, June 1, 2018

“Reshaping shopping with Blockchain and AI… the platform will empower shoppers with product details, competitive, real-time pricing, and peer-reviews on every product they buy while they’re in the store, before they make a purchase, claims this paper.  

Because of antiquated, analog-based systems still used in product ordering, shipping, and inventory management, says the report, retailers lose more than $400 billion each year because of overstocking or under stocking (many stores fail to efficiently manage inventory based on customer demand). An additional $100 billion is lost annually by supermarkets and grocery store chains when tons of perishable foods pass their expiration dates and have to be thrown away.

OSA Decentralized (OSA DC), a team of experts in artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and veterans of the retail industry, has launched a token sale to raise funds to scale its AI-powered, blockchain platform, and give the retail industry a much-needed digital overhaul.

The blockchain, AI and retail experts at OSA DC promise to bring order to the industry’s chaos by leveraging their platform, and smart contract technology, to ensure that every bit of data generated along a retailer’s supply chain is tracked by everyone else, from the farm or manufacturer to the distribution center, to the retailer, and finally to the hands of the customer.

Because of the transparent and incorruptible characteristics off a blockchain (everyone maintains a copy of a shared ledger), OSA is confident there will be no more waste and greater trust between retailers and their partners.

Alex Isaev, CEO of OSA DC, says "There’s a massive shift underway in retail right now; supermarket chains in every country are trashing their antiquated, untrainable retail management software programs and replacing them with trainable, cloud-based algorithms and in-store robots enhanced with artificial intelligence." In fact, according to an economic forecast published by the International Data Corporation (IDC), retailers worldwide are spending $3.4 billion this year alone on a range of AI systems including robotic shopping assistants and omnichannel operations. 

Consumers will be able to use OSA tokens to pay for B2C services, receive exclusive promotional offers and, of course, purchase groceries at major supermarket chains in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. Managers at partnering supermarkets agree with OSA’s founding team of data scientists that crypto currency, including OSA tokens, will be a standard, widely-accepted form off currency at grocery stores and retailers worldwide, says the report).

After three years of R&D, and testing the platform through its partnership with Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), an organization that represents more than 70 of Europe’s leading manufacturers and retailers, OSA founders are ready to deliver their platform and proven solutions to retailers and supermarket chains worldwide.

Because blockchain records, stores, and tracks complex digital transactions and detailed product data, and then makes the data accessible to everyone on a retailer’s supply chain, this transparent technology is likely to have the greatest impact on the consumer, claims the report. Whether information is delivered to them through a smart phone app in the short term, or an artificially-intelligent shopping robot helper in the long term, shoppers will have access to a wealth of data about every product they're considering for purchase while still in the store”.

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