Blockchain-Based Diversion-Point System for Balancing Customer Flow in Shopping Mall

Abstract

Changing the store layout of a shopping mall is usually costly in terms of time, resources, and money. Balancing customer flow is obviously an economical way to rationalize the store layout without displacing stores or changing their locations. However, it has long been a big challenge for managers of shopping malls, because it is difficult to build trust among stores for the sake of regulating customer flow. This trust depends on a multi-party cooperation model, of which the agreements are implemented on asymmetric information. Unfortunately, any form of endorsement with human intervention cannot support building trust on asymmetric information. To solve this problem technically, this paper proposes a diversion-point system to dynamically divert part of customer flow from popular stores to less popular ones. The system operates diversion-points and -vouchers on an asymmetric basis. It also employs a Blockchain subsystem to replace the centralized endorsement and preserve the information asymmetry, thereby building trust into the cooperation among customers, the shopping mall, and the stores therein. The evaluation shows that the proposed system is effective in remedying imperfect store layout of the shopping mall.