Carrefour puts an emphasis on innovation in its operations and logistics. It knows that its customers want to buy in the most convenient way and it develops services to meet that demand. Citing research that suggests 57% of consumers say “waiting is one of the things they dislike most”, Carrefour this year launched Livraisonexpress.fr to offer one-hour deliveries of some 3,000 everyday products within a 30-minute delivery slot. The service, initially launched in Paris and the Greater Paris area, rolls out to Lyon this month. Carrefour has also introduced regular deliveries of a ‘cook’s basket’, Panier Cuistot Carrefour, that contains the ingredients and recipes customers need in order to cook cordon bleu meals in their own homes.
These new additions enhance an existing multichannel logistics infrastructure that includes both banks of collection lockers and smaller, third-party retailers trading at Carrefour hypermarket sites, as well as around 600 Drive outlets where Carrefour shoppers can collect their online orders. Speaking to InternetRetailing’s sister title eDelivery last year, Maxime Taieb, head of methods, solutions & innovation for grocery ecommerce at Carrefour, said: “We’re a retailer. We have to be focused on our customers. Things have to be convenient, you have to keep them happy.”
Taieb said the retailer used ecommerce and store metrics to understand customer behaviour. “This means we can appreciate the impact on customer behaviour of any changes or developments, the same goes for measuring the lifetime value of a customer, and we’re even able to track the customer journey from the website to the store, and from Drive to the store.
The French supermarket, which sells around the world and in the European markets of Spain, France, Romania and Poland, stands out in InternetRetailing research for fast, targeted delivery services that include nominated-day and nominated-time delivery and same-day delivery.
Carrefour chairman and chief executive Georges Plassat emphasised the importance of multichannel in its full-year 2016 results when he said the retailer’s 2.7% rise in net sales to €76.6bn (£65.1bn) attested “to the relevance of our multiformat and omnichannel model, which is now a reality in all our countries”.
He added: “In 2017, Carrefour will continue to expand in all its formats, stores and digital, to enhance its proximity to its clients. Carrefour is resolutely the reference in food retail, anticipating trends, thus opening new paths for development and growth. Innovation, the pursuit of operational excellence and strict financial discipline will support value creation.”
Carrefour sells both online and through mobile apps, as well as through its extensive network of stores. It says that in France, customers who use several Carrefour formats, whether supermarkets, convenience stores or digital, account for half of its customers, and two-thirds of sales.
