Gartner: Blockchain can ‘change retail business models forever’

The business impact of blockchain will be transformational across most industries within five to 10 years, according to Gartner. But, it adds, these opportunities demand that enterprises adopt complete blockchain ecosystems. Without tokenisation and decentralisation, most industries will not see real business value.

“Even though they are still uncertain of the impact blockchain will have on their businesses, 60% of CIOs in the Gartner 2019 CIO Agenda Survey said that they expected some level of adoption of blockchain technologies in the next three years,” says David Furlonger, Distinguished Research VP at Gartner.

“However, the existing digital infrastructure of organisations and the lack of clear blockchain governance are limiting CIOs from getting full value with blockchain.”

In retail, Gartner notes that blockchain is being considered for ‘track and trace’ services, counterfeit prevention, inventory management and auditing, any of which could be used to improve product quality or food safety, for example.

Yet the real impact of blockchain in this space will depend on supporting new ideas, such as using it to transform or augment loyalty programmes. Once it has been combined with the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), the technology has the potential to change retail business models forever, impacting both data and monetary flows and avoiding centralisation of market power, Gartner argues.