In a competitive market, the customer is the protagonist. They will decide what the best product is out of the ones available on the market. Besides looking at the product itself, they will also decide the best place to buy the product and the best manufacturer.

Today, apart from providing great packaging, it is important for a store to have a perfect layout and to provide easy-to-read descriptions of products and items. Information about the origins of a product, whether it meets the standards required, and whether it has the necessary certifications is also of huge importance to customers. Some differential factors for customers when choosing their products are having easy access to all of this information, reading QR codes, and being able to listen to product details using an augmented reality solution.

Customers are more selective before buying a product that they will eat, have more opportunities to interact with products, and know more about how food impacts on their bodies, said a pair of futurists at a July U.S. Chamber of Commerce event. You can find out more about this here: https://www.fooddive.com/news/what-will-grocery-shopping-look-like-in-the-future/447503/.

The challenges within this chain are not easy to overcome. The possible impact of problems can result in much more than financial loss; they can lead to health issues for customers, or even death.

Technology can be a great ally to solve these issues. It's certain that, when we talk about IoT and blockchain, this combination can revolutionize this sector by bringing transparency between members in shared process chains, allowing them to control data more efficiently, increasing security, making processes automatic and dynamic, removing middlemen, and making the chain less complex.

We can also see that all of the members within the chain have huge challenges of their own and that the use of IoT and blockchain technologies can bring positive results. A better product position or brand equity for the customer can result in more power in their choices and an awareness of what they are consuming.