Carrefour: Revolutionizing the shopping experience

Problem

Carrefour is the number one retailer in Europe and number two in the world with over 9,900 stores in 33 countries. The 365,000 Carrefour employees are the group’s leading asset and have been given the best training to develop their customer centric approach and retail expertise. Carrefour is commited at making their customer’s shopping experience the best. This is why the retailer is continually seeking to enhance its customers’ store experience by adopting innovative technologies. 

Many customers today, especially those living in cities, are acutely time and promotion-sensitive –they don’t want to lose unnecessary time shopping in stores and are continuously searching for the best offers. For them, the best, most enjoyable shopping experience is one that is efficient and streamlined. 

“Carrefour came to us 6 months ago searching for ideas to modernize the shopping experience in their stores,” says Arnaud Lecat, VP Store Solutions at Pricer.

Implementation

Enhancing the store’s shopping experience

With this is mind, for Carrefour’s Villeneuve la Garenne hypermarket, Pricer developed a retail solution with Geolocalisation, Mobile Shopping and graphic SmartTAG Electronic Shelf Labels.

“Pricer delivered a solution enabling Carrefour to interact with their customers through their smartphones and the ESLs.” continues Lecat.

The mobile App created for Carrefour, called “C-où” (available on Android and iOS), allows customers to create ‘shopping lists’ and search for products – meaning they can prepare their basket before they even arrive at the store. The App also generates recipe ideas, and, when a recipe is selected by the shopper, highlights and suggests which other products are required. The solution also includes geolocalisation – once inside the store, it helps customers find any product, and optimises their shopping route through indoor navigation.

Solution

Exact pricing and precise geolocalisation with Pricer Graphic labels

The store has been equipped throughout with 55,000 Pricer NFC-enabled ESLs. Not only do these bring with them all the benefits of ESLs – centralized price automation- but the NFC capability mean that customers can access more information about a product – ingredients, pictures, data and more – simply by putting their NFC-enabled smartphone next to the shelf label. Customers can even ‘like’ a product with their phone and the label will display the total number of ‘likes’.

The ESL labels are all linked to the product database and thus the Mobile App, ensuring that there are no price discrepancies and that in-store location is even more accurate – the price a customer sees on the App is the same price that they pay at the counter, and the product is exactly where the App says it will be.

Result

The benefits of ecommerce for physical stores

For Carrefour, Pricer’s solutions enable a better understanding of customers’ behaviour in-store, while the improved customer experience adds fluidity to the shopping experience to ensure they will return again.

“We are proud to play a role in this prestigious project,” continued Lecat. “For Carrefour, customer service is paramount – they are a retailer that understands that innovative new technologies can enrich this experience, and, in so doing, boost customer loyalty. The solutions Pricer has developed make this store fully connected – and bring the ‘simple and efficient’ benefits of internet shopping, in-store.”

Carrefour Villeneuve la Garenne is the first store worldwide that allows customers to benefit from Pricer’s integrated solution using indoor navigation, mobile shopping and SmartTAG graphic labels.