TIP Report

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Product Sampling Digitization Report submitted in the partial fulfillment Of Master of Business Administration -Technology Management In Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering By Swapnil Sinha (J060) Under the supervision of Raghav Toshniwal (CTO & Co-Founder, Omniflo) Anjana Rodrigues (Assistant Professor, EXTC Department, MPSTME) SVKM’s NMIMS University (Deemed-to-be University) MUKESH PATEL SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT & ENGINEERING Vile Parle (W), Mumbai-56 2021-22

2022 Product Sampling Digitization INTERNSHIP COMPLETION CERTIFICATE This is to certify that Mr. Swapnil Sinha; Roll No J060 has completed training & project as a part of technical internship in our company as mentioned below and the report is also submitted. Project Title: Product Sampling Digitization Date of Joining: 02/05/2022 Date of Completion: 30/06/2022 In partial fulfilment of VII Semester Technical Internship for MBA(Tech) program of Mukesh Patel School of Technology Management & Engineering , Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) (Deemed-to-be University), Mumbai. Date: 29/06/2022 Place: Bengaluru

2022 Product Sampling Digitization CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the project entitled “Product Sampling Digitization”, has been done by Mr. Swapnil Sinha under my guidance and supervision for Technical Internship Program as part of curriculum of Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering of MPSTME, SVKM’s NMIMS (Deemed-to-be University), Mumbai, India. _______________ ______________ Prof. Anjana Rodrigues Examiner Date: _______________ Place: Mumbai Dr. Avinash More (H.O.D. EXTC)

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Acknowledgement I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity to work as an intern in Omniflo, and would like to express my sincere gratitude to the company for giving me the opportunity to complete my summer internship program with them. I owe a deep sense of gratitude to industry mentor, Mr. Raghav Toshniwal for his generous support, coaching and companionship and by investing his valuable time despite his busy schedule to hear, guide and keep me on the correct path and allowing me to carry out my project during the complete internship program. I would also like to thank the other colleagues for their co-operative support and sharing their expertise with me very generously. I value the insights and guidance provided by Prof. Anjana Rodrigues and her keen interest, careful and precious guidance at every stage of my research and the EXTC department for taking part in useful decisions & giving necessary advices and guidance. I choose this moment to acknowledge their contribution gratefully. The skills and knowledge which I have gained throughout my practical training, I perceive as a very valuable component in my future career development. I will strive to implement these acquired skills and knowledge in the best possible way. Sincerely, Swapnil Sinha MBA Tech-EXTC Roll No. J060

2022 Product Sampling Digitization ABSTRACT Despite the ups and downs faced by the global market last year, the retail business is growing bigger every day. According to recent research by Statista, it is observed that worldwide sales amounted to $3.53 trillion in 2019, and the revenues are projected to grow to $6.54 trillion in 2022. The numbers clearly reflect the potential of the industry as online shopping has become one of the most popular internet activities worldwide. Product sampling is the process of giving free samples away to customers. It happens when customers can try miniature versions of a product for free before buying it. The idea is, once they try the product for free, they’ll be more confident in paying full price for the same item. Marketers can show other people using the product, back up a product with statistics, and collect influencer endorsements. But sometimes, the only way customers will trust what a brand is selling is by trying it themselves. Product samples allow them to do that for free. In order to make the above statements possible the primary task started with the creation of a progressive web application that ensured Product Sampling with data collection. One of ways to do this in this modern era was to make use of QR Code (Quick Response) which is among the emerging technologies that retailers can implement for adapting to these changes. Smartphone-based mobile advertising is a promising marketing vehicle, especially in retail and point-of-purchase environments. The customers first scan the QR Code of the store they visited and get an opportunity to collect a free sample of various kinds of products. From a customer point of view, it is just a 2-Tap Application. One is to Sign In, Another is to select the Product from available Samples. After that, they just have to show the landing page to the shopkeeper.

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Table of Contents Topics Page List of Figures i List of Tables ii Abbreviations iii Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction of the Industry 1 1.2 Motivation & Scope of the Report 2 1.3 Salient Contribution 3 1.4 Organization of Report 4 Chapter 2 Problem Statement 5 Chapter 3 Methodology 6 Chapter 4 System Analysis 10 Chapter 5 Technology Stack 13 Chapter 6 Testing and Results 18 Chapter 7 Advantages & Limitations 7.1 Advantages 25 7.2 Limitations 25 Chapter 8 Conclusion and Future Scope 26 References 27

2022 Product Sampling Digitization List of the figures Fig No. Name of the Figure Page No. 1 Admin Dashboard 10 2 Stores Page 10 3 Cohorts Page 11 4 Products Page 11 5 Active Users Page 12 6 Live Activities Page 12 7 Login Issue in Admin Page 18 8 Store Update Page Error 19 9 Fixed Image Stretching Issue 19 10 QR Codes Deployed 21 11 Ezeebuy Super Market Page 22 12 Sample Redeemed Success Page 23 13 Sample Already Collected Error 24

2022 Product Sampling Digitization List of Abbreviations Abbreviations Full Form Page No. D2C Direct to Customer 1 QRCode Quick Response Code 2 UI User Interface 3 UX User Experience 3 ID Identity 6 CSS Cascading Style Sheets 6 ReactJS React Javascript 7 GIT Global Information Tracker 7 CRUD Create, Read, Update and Delete 7 API Application Programming Interface 8 NodeJS Node JavaScript 8 AWS Amazon Web Services 13 NoSQL Not Only Structured Query Language 14 MongoDB Mongo DataBase 14 HTML Hypertext Markup Language 15 ExpressJS Express JavaScript 17 WebApp Web Application 18

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction of the Industry More than 800 new-age brands from India bade farewell to middlemen in the past few years and took the direct-to-consumer (D2C) route. The D2C model has witnessed a massive uptick across the country as it enables brands to bypass the intermediaries to reach consumers faster and cater to them more efficiently. The recent outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic hit the traditional retail sector hard, making brands realise the importance of shifting towards a D2C model. FMCG giants such as Johnson & Johnson, Himalaya, Hindustan Unilever, ITC, Lakme and others, which have dominated the Indian market for decades, are now challenged by young startups like Mamaearth, The Moms Co, Bey Bee, Azah, Nua and Pee Safe, among others. India's retail trade is still largely offline, and online FMCG sales on the internet make up less than 5% of overall trade. Unorganized stores, on the other hand, account for nearly 87% of the share of FMCG sales. So, e-commerce can help create a very strong business till a certain size, and after that brands go offline as an additional strategy. D2C brands born on the internet are rapidly setting up retail stores and selling through supermarkets and neighbourhood shops, as they sense the vast potential of the offline sales channel. Relying on any one channel is not wise in the continually evolving market space. Consumers spend half of the time searching and looking online, and the other half visiting and experiencing in-store, so no matter if you started with an online business or an offline business, you have to go in the other direction to capture their attention. Therefore, brands are turning to the omnichannel model. The progress registered in the field of information and communication technologies has induced significant changes in the purchasing behaviour of the consumers who 1

2022 Product Sampling Digitization nowadays want simultaneous use of online and offline channels within the same shopping experience. QR Code is among the emerging technologies that retailers can implement for adapting to these changes. Smartphone-based mobile advertising is a promising marketing vehicle, especially in retail and point-of-purchase environments. QR codes, which rely on pull-based approaches, rather than push-style advertising encourage consumer use of mobile advertising according to surveys. The rapid growth of information and communication technologies and the knowledge-based economic evolution are driving organizations to utilize technological approaches to business activities. The increase in smartphone use by consumers has led marketers to design new forms of selling products. Among the latest marketing trends, sampling with the incorporation of QR Codes is emerging as one of the most promising technologies to increase the information provided to consumers and influence their buying behavior. According to Albastroiu and Felea, QR Codes allow quick access to information such as website addresses, e-mails, phone numbers, geographical coordinates, etc., through mobile devices. They can be used on product labels and advertising media and consumers can access their content with any mobile or smartphone with a built-in camera and QR Code reader software However, navigating the retail environment dominated by FMCG heavyweights like HUL, P&G & Dabur can be challenging. That's where Omniflo comes in to provide a plug & play network of retail shelves for online-first brands. 1.2 Motivation and Scope of the Report Free product sampling has increasingly become a popular promotional strategy and served as a new mechanism of product review generation in e-commerce. It has been seen that a product’s engagement in free product sampling affects the product’s review rating, and also important contingent factors of product pricing and product popularity. Despite the ups and downs faced by the global market last year, the retail business is growing bigger every day. According to recent research, it is observed that worldwide sales amounted to more than 3 trillion in 2019, and the revenues are projected to grow to more than 6 trillion in 2022. The numbers clearly reflect the potential of the industry as online shopping has become one of the most popular internet activities worldwide. 2

2022 Product Sampling Digitization 1.3 Salient Contribution Backend Created Backend APIs Frontend Created User Friendly Frontend Frontend Google Login & Congrats Page Accounts Setup Google Account, Github, Temporary Delpoyed on Heroku Designing UI/UX Frontend Completed Frontend UI/UX Portion Planning Wireframe of Admin Panel Admin Worked Stores, Products Displaying Portion Admin Worked on Activities, Users & Cohorts Admin | Frontend Integrating Main App & Admin Review & Bug Reviewing with Heads & Bug Fixes of Login Fixes Presentation Presentation of Admin Updates Adding Timios Products & Google One Tap Sign In Update Backend Brands Collection in Backend Updates | Bug Bugs fixed of Store Updating, Image Stretching & Added Fixes Features like Sign Out & Loading Spinner Backend Working on QR Generation & Scanning Deployment Successful Deployment on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Firebase & brought on live domain Updates Adding NuttyFox Products , Green Fresh Store & Removing Sign Out Option Bug Fixes CSS Bug Fixes Updates Adding Maha Bazaar & Setting Limit Feature to a Particular Store Admin Adding Activity Report Generation in CSV Format Admin Automatically sending reports of Daily Activity via Email 3

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Admin | Brand Adding Authentication to Admin, Creating Brand Dashboard Bug Fixes CSV Report Generation Issue Admin Updates Sending Stock Left Report, Add Feature if Admin Scans any QR, then his scanning wont get recorded Updates Adding almost 30 New Stores and Activating 8 new Cohorts Admin Designing Revamping the whole Admin Panel with new Responsive UI Design Admin Updates Store Live Location Adding Feature and Calling Feature Admin Updates Adding Store Active | Inactive Toggle Button in Stores Admin Updates Showing Total Stock (Category wise as well) in a Particular Cohort 1.4 Organization of Report • Chapter 1- Introduces the basic concepts and the workflow of the project to provide a detailed understanding into the overall background of the project. • Chapter 2- Problem Statement defines a concise description of an issue that is to be addressed by the project. It identifies and focuses on the requirements of the project. • Chapter 3- Methodology prescribed to cover all intended parts of the project. • Chapter 4- System Analysis- Describes the systems that are under study and analyzes key features of the system to give a clear understanding of the overall framework. • Chapter 5- Technology Stack- To give a brief overview of the software used in the project and its utility. • Chapter 6- Testing and Results show the final overview of the intended work done/in-progress. • Chapter 7- Advantages, Limitations and Applications • Chapter 8- Conclusion and Future Scope. 4

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 2 Problem Statement Product sampling is the process of giving free samples away to customers. It happens when customers can try miniature versions of a product for free before buying it. The idea is, once they try the product for free, they’ll be more confident in paying full price for the same item. Marketers can show other people using the product, back up a product with statistics, and collect influencer endorsements. But sometimes, the only way customers will trust what a brand is selling is by trying it themselves, product samples allow them to do that for free. In order to make the above statements possible the primary task started with the creation of a progressive web application that ensured Product Sampling with data collection. One of ways to do this in this modern era was to make use of QR Code which is among the emerging technologies that retailers can implement for adapting to these changes. Smartphone-based mobile advertising is a promising marketing vehicle, especially in retail and point-of-purchase environments. The customers first scan the QR Code of the store they visited and get an opportunity to collect a free sample of various kinds of products. From a customer point of view, it is just a 2-Tap Application. One is to Sign In, Another is to select the Product from available Samples. After that, they just have to show the landing page to the shopkeeper. The goal is to digitize the product sampling experience for customers & brands that will result in drastic savings for brands by eliminating the need for the promoters. 5

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 3 Methodology 1. Frontend (App) This is what the user sees and interacts with. All views and designs are solely based on making the user experience smoother and better. Whenever the user enters the website URL, the browser sends a request to the server, where the website is currently being hosted. The server in turn sends back all the required HTML, CSS and additional framework files back to the browser, which displays them for the user. The user can now view the website Goal: To create a user-friendly application for users using ReactJS. Objectives: 1. A page that will show all free samples present in the cohort as per the store ID. 2. There will be different home/landing pages for different stores, as there are different samples for each store. 3. The customer after selecting the sample, the Customer might need to Login using Google 4. If the user is already logged in, He comes to the Ending page which says "Congratulations for getting a free sample, Collect it from the counter!" 5. If a user has already collected a sample from a store, then he/she cannot collect any sample from the same store within the next 48 hours limit (Limit varies as per cohorts). Requirements (Technology Stack): 1. ReactJS 2. Tailwind CSS 3. Firebase for Deployment 4. GIT as Version Control 6

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Add-ons: 1. Google One-Tap Sign In on Landing Page 2. A customer cannot collect samples from the same store within 48 hours. 2. Frontend (Admin) Goal: To create Admin Panel for Omniflo Admins Objectives: 1. An app that helps admin to perform CRUD Operations of Products, Stores, Cohorts, Users & Activities easily. 2. They can search & filter products, stores, users, cohorts, activities. 3. They can add Products and assign them to a Particular Cohort. 4. They can update the stock of Products in a Particular Cohort. Requirements (Technology Stack): 1. ReactJS 2. Tailwind CSS 3. Firebase for Deployment 4. GIT as Version Control Updates: 1. Adding Store Column in Activity of Samples Collected. 2. Generate Report in CSV Format of Activities (It can be Filtered as per requirements). 3. Adding Authentication to access Admin Panel. 4. Sending Daily Reports of Activities. 5. Sending Stock Empty Mail. 6. Store Active | Inactive feature, Adding Live Location of Store. 7

2022 Product Sampling Digitization 3. Backend Serve- side implementation, also known as the back end of the website. The back end has the server itself which listens for incoming request and information over the internet and sends back responses. The server or back end is largely responsible for storing, accessing, and manipulating data. The data can be fetched and shown to the front- end using queries and stored in databases. The backend also handles important tasks such as authentication and authorization. Validation is also a large part, as all data needs to be validated before being stored in a database, with increasing cyber- attacks, having a well- organized database is a must. Goal : Create APIs (Backend) and connect data. The Backend of our web application is implemented using Express.JS (Node.js Framework to run APIs). Backend helps to connect data to applications. It helps to have an intermediate connection between user and data (Database). The Database is running on MongoDB Atlas (NoSQL Database). Our Database consists of 6 Types of Data: Collections of Data: 1. Products (All Products which will be visible to users) 2. Stores (Wherever QRCode is available) 3. Users (Who use our website for collecting free samples) 4. Cohorts (Categories that store collection of products for a particular store) 5. Activities (To keep track of which user collecting which data) 6. Brands (Brands who try to share their free samples) Requirements (Technology Stack): 1. NodeJS 2. ExpressJS 3. MongoDB Atlas 8

2022 Product Sampling Digitization 4. Deployment, Storage & APIs Goal: To make the application live. One of the most important aspects of website development is its deployment. Which helps to bring it live into the World Wide Web. Google & GitHub Accounts were set up for all these process 1. Frontend is deployed on Firebase Hosting. 2. Backend is deployed on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. 3. Domain Name [omniflo.in] (http://omniflo.in) was bought from GoDaddy where 1. Frontend uses app.omniflo.in 2. Backend uses api.omniflo.in 4. Firebase Storage is used for storing all Product Images. 5. Google Console is used for Google Authentication and 'One Tap Sign In' APIs 5. Brand Dashboard Goal: The main idea is to make a complete Admin Dashboard for Companies. Objective:- 1. Fully Mobile Responsive & Attractive UI. 2. Graphical / Optimal Representation. 3. Able to see Samples Data. 4. Able to see Sales Data (WooCommerce Orders). 5. Different Login Credentials for Different Brands 9

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 4 System Analysis This is the main admin dashboard. It acts as a control center and shows the live count of all the activities happening in the app. Figure 1. Admin Dashboard The stores tab is where new stores are onboarded. It contains all the details of the stores. Figure 2. Stores Page 10

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Cohorts are categories that store collection of products for a particular store. It can be modified using this tab. Figure 3. Cohorts Page Product page provides a central hub to manage all the products – name, brand, images, quantity etc. Figure 4. Products Page 11

2022 Product Sampling Digitization All the active users of the app can be viewed through Users tab. We can also ban users from here. Figure 5. Active users page Activities provides a live list of all the sampling activity happening in the stores. Figure 6. Live Activities Page 12

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 5 Technology Stack 1. VS Code Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor which runs on your desktop and is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node.js and has a rich ecosystem of extensions for other languages (such as C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, Go) and runtimes (such as .NET and Unity). 2. Git Git is a distributed version control system that enables software development teams to have multiple local copies of the project’s codebase independent of each other. These copies, or branches, can be created, merged, and deleted quickly, empowering teams to experiment, with little compute cost, before merging into the main branch. Git is known for its speed, workflow compatibility, and open source foundation. Most Git actions only add data to the database, and Git makes it easy to undo changes during the three main states. Git has three file states: modified, staged, and committed. 1. A modified file has been changed but isn’t committed to the database yet. 2. A staged file is set to go into the next commit. 3. When a file is committed, the data has been stored in the database. 3. AWS Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on- demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide distributed computing processing capacity and software tools via AWS server farms. One of these services is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), 13

2022 Product Sampling Digitization which allows users to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, available all the time, through the Internet. AWS's virtual computers emulate most of the attributes of a real computer, including hardware central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) for processing; local/RAM memory; hard- disk/SSD storage; a choice of operating systems; networking; and pre-loaded application software such as web servers, databases, and customer relationship management (CRM). Amazon web service is an online platform that provides scalable and cost-effective cloud computing solutions. AWS is a broadly adopted cloud platform that offers several on-demand operations like compute power, database storage, content delivery, etc., to help corporates scale and grow. 4. Firebase Firebase is a Backend-as-a-Service (Baas). It provides developers with a variety of tools and services to help them develop quality apps, grow their user base, and earn profit. It is built on Google’s infrastructure. Firebase is categorized as a NoSQL database program, which stores data in JSON-like documents. Firebase is a product of Google which helps developers to build, manage, and grow their apps easily. It helps developers to build their apps faster and in a more secure way. No programming is required on the firebase side which makes it easy to use its features more efficiently. It provides services to android, ios, web, and unity. It provides cloud storage. It uses NoSQL for the database for the storage of data. 5. MongoDB MongoDB is an open-source document-oriented database that is designed to store a large scale of data and also allows you to work with that data very efficiently. It is categorized under the NoSQL (Not only SQL) database because the storage and retrieval of data in the MongoDB are not in the form of tables. MongoDB, the most popular NoSQL database, is an open-source document-oriented database. The term ‘NoSQL’ means ‘non-relational’. It means that MongoDB isn’t based on the table- like relational database structure but provides an altogether different mechanism for storage and retrieval of data. This format of storage is called BSON ( similar to JSON format). 14

2022 Product Sampling Digitization 6. HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript. Web browsers receive HTML documents from a web server or from local storage and render the documents into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for the appearance of the document. HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects such as interactive forms may be embedded into the rendered page. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as and directly introduce content into the page. Other tags such as

surround and provide information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do not display the HTML tags but use them to interpret the content of the page. 7. CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and JavaScript. CSS is designed to enable the separation of presentation and content, including layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can improve content accessibility; provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics; enable multiple web pages to share formatting by specifying the relevant CSS in a separate .css file, which reduces complexity and repetition in 15

2022 Product Sampling Digitization the structural content; and enable the .css file to be cached to improve the page load speed between the pages that share the file and its formatting. 8. ReactJS ReactJS is a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces based on UI components. It is maintained by Meta (formerly Facebook) and a community of individual developers and companies. React can be used as a base in the development of single-page, mobile, or server-rendered applications with frameworks like Next.js. However, React is only concerned with state management and rendering that state to the DOM, so creating React applications usually requires the use of additional libraries for routing, as well as certain client-side functionality. 9. Tailwind CSS Tailwind CSS can be used to make websites in the fastest and the easiest way. Tailwind CSS is basically a utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces. It is a highly customizable, low-level CSS framework that gives you all of the building blocks you need to build bespoke designs without any annoying opinionated styles you have to fight to override. The beauty of this thing called tailwind is it doesn’t impose design specification or how your site should look like, you simply bring tiny components together to construct a user interface that is unique. What Tailwind simply does is take a ‘raw’ CSS file, processes this CSS file over a configuration file, and produces an output. 10. NodeJS Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment that runs on the V8 engine and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser, which was designed to build scalable network applications. Node.js lets developers use JavaScript to write command line tools and for server-side scripting—running scripts server-side to produce dynamic web page content before the page is sent to the user's web browser. Consequently, Node.js represents a "JavaScript everywhere" paradigm,[6] unifying web-application 16

2022 Product Sampling Digitization development around a single programming language, rather than different languages for server-side and client-side scripts. Node.js has an event-driven architecture capable of asynchronous I/O. These design choices aim to optimize throughput and scalability in web applications with many input/output operations, as well as for real-time Web applications (e.g., real-time communication programs and browser games).[7] 11. ExpressJS Express.js, or simply Express, is a back end web application framework for Node.js, released as free and open-source software under the MIT License. It is designed for building web applications and APIs. It has been called the de facto standard server framework for Node.js. Express is a minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications. It is an open source framework developed and maintained by the Node.js foundation. 12. MongoDB MongoDB is an open-source document database and leading NoSQL database. MongoDB is written in C++. MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. 17

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 6 Testing and Results Testing is an integral part of the entire project development. Over the course, the webapp was thoroughly tested and the following bugs and issues were detected and the results are as following : 1. Login Issue (App) Figure 7. Login Issue in Admin Page A Login Issue was detected Date - 16th May 2022 Caught by CEO - Not able to Sign In Issue: Google Console Issue Resolved: Working Perfectly after Refreshing Console 18

2022 Product Sampling Digitization 2. Store Updating not Working (Admin) Figure 8. Store Update Page Error Date – 23rd May 2022 Caught by CTO - Updating not happening Issue: Backend Issue Resolved: Working Perfectly 3. Product Image Figure 9. Fixed Image Stretching Issue 19

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Date – 30th May 2022 Caught by CTO - Image Stretching leading to the shabby look Issue: Frontend CSS Issue Resolved: Image Size is Fixed now. 4. Deployment Issue Date – 8th June 2022 Faced by Gaurang - Not able to Deploy on AWS EC2 Resolved by CTO: Deploying on Elastic Beanstalk & Firebase 5. CSV Generation Issue Date - 17th June 2022 Caught by Zamil - Not able to export CSV Issue: Backend Issue 20

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Result 30 stores were selected for the pilot testing and the QR Codes were ready to be deployed in stores. Figure 10. QR Codes Deployed 21

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Whenever someone will scan the QR code , they will be able to select from the list of samples available in that store. Figure 11. Ezeebuy SuperMarket Store Page 22

2022 Product Sampling Digitization After selecting a sample, the customer will be shown a voucher page which they’ll have to show to the shopkeeper to redeem the sample. Figure 12. Sample Redeemed Success Page 23

2022 Product Sampling Digitization There’s also misuse prevention. If someone has already redeemed a sample, they won’t be able to redeem a sample again for some time. Figure 12. Sample Already Collected Error 24

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 7 Advantages and Limitations Advantages: 1. Increasing sales 2. Giving customers a taste of the product 3. Getting helpful feedback on products from real customers 4. Building excitement and demand for a product launch 5. Generating ratings and reviews and other key user-generated content Limitations: 1. Money and Time Costs 2. There's No Guarantee that customers will Use the Product 3. Usually, more work escalated, particularly for more mind-boggling products as services and support teams should be included 4. Can extend the product cycle as the prospect may need to get other individuals from his/her product involved, and really do genuine installation work 5. Some prospects will continue requesting free trial extensions, which can make an antagonistic circumstance with the product that needs to solidify the deal or walk away 25

2022 Product Sampling Digitization Chapter 8 Conclusion and Future Scope To sum up, I had a great learning experience during the past two months in Bengaluru. I've learned many useful lessons from working on this web application with a team that will be helpful to me in the future. The project is currently active in 30 stores and will inevitably grow over time. In order to provide consumers with samples without any hassle, a feature to make the entire procedure available on WhatsApp is also being explored. 26

2022 Product Sampling Digitization References [1] Myerson, P. (2020). Omni-Channel Retail and the Supply Chain: Working Together for a Competitive Advantage (1st ed.). Productivity Press. [2] Leimstoll, U., Wölfle, R. 2021. Direct to Consumer D2C E-Commerce: Goals and Strategies of Brand Manufacturers. In: Dornberger, R.eds New Trends in Business Information Systems and Technology. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 294. Springer, Cham. [3] S. Tiwari, "An Introduction to QR Code Technology," 2016 International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT), 2016, pp. 39-44, doi: 10.1109/ICIT.2016.021. [4] Holmes, John H., and John D. Lett. "Product sampling and word of mouth." Journal of Advertising Research (1977). [5] Sprott, David E., and Terence A. Shimp. "Using product sampling to augment the perceived quality of store brands." Journal of Retailing 80.4 (2004): 305-315. [6] Lin, Zhijie, Ying Zhang, and Yong Tan. "An empirical study of free product sampling and rating bias." Information Systems Research 30.1 (2019): 260-275. [7] McGuinness, Dalton, Philip Gendall, and Stephen Mathew. "The effect of product sampling on product trial, purchase and conversion." International Journal of Advertising 11.1 (1992): 83-92. [8] Tandel, S., and Abhishek Jamadar. "Impact of progressive web apps on web app development." International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology 7.9 (2018): 9439-9444. 27