Martech Spotlight: Carrefour
The retail brand is improving in-store and online CX with technological advancements. With consumers adopting a multi-channel approach to retail shopping, Carrefour is making strides in technological adoption, keeping in view the changing shopping behaviour of customers. It launched customer self-checkout counters for those who prefer contactless physical shopping. It also has Scan&Go Mobile technology […]
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The retail brand is improving in-store and online CX with technological advancements.
With consumers adopting a multi-channel approach to retail shopping, Carrefour is making strides in technological adoption, keeping in view the changing shopping behaviour of customers. It launched customer self-checkout counters for those who prefer contactless physical shopping. It also has Scan&Go Mobile technology to enable customers to scan and pay for their products using their mobile phones without queueing in the store. To adopt these transformations, Carrefour revamped its existing physical stores to prepare them for the digital-enabled world.
The pandemic has paved the way for a more multi-channel consumer experience. Forty-Five per cent of shoppers from the Middle East reported that they shop through their smartphones.
However, In-store shopping has not lost its shine and continues to be the most popular channel for frequent purchases in the region, with 50 per cent of consumers choosing to visit physical stores daily or weekly, revealed the Global Consumer Insights Survey 2022 done by Pulse 3
Carrefour started its journey in the Middle East in 1995. The UAE-based retail giant Majid Al Futtaim owns the exclusive franchisee of this French retailer brand operating in over 30 countries across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Majid Al Futtaim wholly owns Carrefour operations in the region.
Sensing the brand engagement opportunity, the retailer has partnered with Visa to ship five football fans on a free trip to FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Customers had an option to enter the competition by spending more than AED 500 (136.12 USD) at Carrefour in-store and online through their Visa cards.
Metaverse Journey
Along with improving CX and effective brand engagements, Carrefour made its first dip into the metaverse – the inter-connected social worlds – in February this year.
The brand announced that it had acquired parcel number 33,147 in the metaverse—an area worth 30 supermarkets—indicating a fresh user experience. Here is how it tapped patrons of the virtual universe.
Within just half a year, it has covered plenty of ground by collaborating with major brands, hiring on metaverse, and gamifying the virtual experience for its customers.
The retail chain’s most recent metaverse collaboration was with Proctor and Gamble’s Mr. Clean vertical. The partnership is being touted as “the first joint retail/FMCG brand experience in the metaverse.”
In a LinkedIn post, Elodie Perthuisot, Chief Ecommerce, Digital Transformation and Data Officer & EXCOM member at Carrefour, said: “Thanks to their lab, we are both offering Carrefour customers a marketing activation of a new style, between gamification, immersion, and Web3, all with a Mr. Clean, like you have never seen before.”
She added that renewing the classic advertisements and activations was a test to create a link between the metaverse and ecommerce. Perthuisot said that this experience would further evolve, considering the feedback from their customers.
Carrefour is not a metaverse newbie. Before its Proctor and Gamble stint, it purchased a virtual plot in The Sandbox game.
Developed in 2015, The Sandbox provides its users with tools to create tailored gameplay, commonly known as a “sandbox mode.” The player can craft their world by adding resources such as water, soil, lightning, lava, sand, glass, humans, wildlife, and mechanical contraptions.
The company bought parcel number 33,147 in the metaverse, an area worth 30 supermarkets, indicating a fresh user experience. Besides, Carrefour ecommerce chief Perthuisot has shown that concrete projects are soon to follow.
The company has said that the field will be at the heart of its metaverse excursions as it aims to understand the evolutions of retail and consumption that will come.
Carrefour was reportedly accompanied by the crypto-bank Coinhouse while buying the land and for the digital asset storage service.
Job hiring in the metaverse
On 18 May 2022, the Carrefour group became the first recruiter in the metaverse. In partnership with VR Academie (which specialises in the metaverse), students from Ecole Polytechnique (an engineering school) and Institut Mines-Telecom Business School indulge in an environment created for them.
In a video posted on Twitter, Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard addresses a crowd of job seekers on the first day of the virtual recruitment event. According to Bompard, the group aspires to employ more data analysts and scientists. The firm expects to hire 3,000 data specialists in the next four years.
The event was an opportunity to introduce the 30 participants to the data professions at Carrefour. The company’s operational teams came to present their jobs and discuss with the candidates the challenges faced by the group.
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