Carrefour Belgium tests ChatGPT: “Shopping with AI will save customers a lot of time”

Grocery shopping via ChatGPT: that’s already possible at Carrefour Belgium. The supermarket chain doesn’t expect to attract millions of users right away, but it does want to understand how agent AI is changing search and purchasing behavior. “How does the customer interact with the AI?”

A user-friendly solution

Since September, customers at Carrefour Belgium have been able to do their grocery shopping using artificial intelligence. It’s very simple: customers log in to ChatGPT and activate the plugin. They can then use it in their conversations with @Carrefour Belgium. The assistant helps customers create a shopping list, check product availability, and place an order. The tool knows what’s in stock at your local Carrefour; the order is linked to your Carrefour Bonus Card; and you can choose whether to have your groceries delivered to your home or pick them up at the Drive.

Thousands of users have already tested it, says Jean-Philippe Blerot, head of digital projects and e-commerce at Carrefour. He’s proud of how user-friendly this solution is—it was developed in Belgium and has already been hailed by various experts as the best ChatGPT experience they’ve had so far.

Search behavior is changing

Why is Carrefour investing in this? “Our goal isn’t to immediately have millions of customers on ChatGPT. We want to understand how customers will behave in the future. And to do that, we need to test. What will customers ask for? Recipes? Protein? The classic grocery list? As a customer, you can indeed use it in different ways. You can start with a photo of your shopping list. You can say, ‘Look up my previous orders, place the same order as last week, but add water and raclette cheese.’ Or you can start with a recipe on Instagram.”

Just a few weeks after the launch, Carrefour is starting to see certain patterns. “Customers are very traditional. They mainly want their shopping list. But search habits are definitely going to change. People no longer search by keywords but ask questions in complete sentences: ‘I’m having friends over this weekend—there are six adults and four children—could you put together a basket for the barbecue?’ That’s how searching will work tomorrow.”

“Customers save an hour”

The question is: how will the AI agent make its selection? “If you share your chat history with ChatGPT, it gets to know you better and better and can choose the products that suit you best. If you say you prefer organic products, it takes your preferences into account. If you prefer a certain brand, it will adapt accordingly. It will become important for brands to truly understand customer expectations, because AI will increasingly take on the role of a coach. Products that are better for your health, contain less salt, and have more fiber and protein… that’s probably what customers will be looking for in the future. Suppliers will need to optimize their GEO (Generative Engine Optimization, ed.). And they’ll also need to optimize product promotion on LLMs and e-commerce sites. We call that data valorization.”

In any case, he sees potential in it. “It’s like with Amazon: once people trust it, they keep using it. Because it’s easy. You save an hour when you no longer have to do your own grocery shopping.” At the “AI in Retail” pre-event during RetailDetail Night on November 19 in Brussels, Matthieu Ullens and Jean-Philippe Blerot from Carrefour Belgium will demonstrate how shopping via ChatGPT works. Don’t expect a traditional PowerPoint presentation: in an interactive session using a video, they’ll illustrate the user experience and explain how agentic AI will transform grocery shopping and online marketing. You can order tickets using the button below.