Carrefour pushes the digital accelerator a little deeper: in the coming years, the retailer will invest three billion euros in digitisation projects. The ambition: to become the world leader in digital retail.
Fast delivery services
Digitisation is the big priority for Carrefour: the retailer unveiled a new digital strategy at its Digital Day in Paris today. The ambitions are high: e-commerce sales must triple by 2026. Sales (more specifically, the GMV or gross merchandise value) should reach ten billion euros, compared to an expected 3.3 billion euros this year.
To achieve that goal, Carrefour is developing new services alongside the Drive pick-up points that are the dominant model in France. An important role is reserved for express deliveries (in less than three hours) and quick commerce (within 15 minutes). The retailer also sees potential in personal shopper services such as Bringo, which was recently launched in Argentina and also operates in France under the name OK Market.
Focus on omnichannel customers
According to Carrefour, e-commerce will contribute to the group results due to the fact that omnichannel customers are better customers: they spend 27 % more with the retailer after two years and are significantly more loyal. By 2026, Carrefour wants to have 30 % omnichannel customers, compared to 11 % today.
Furthermore, the supermarket group expects a lot from its activities in data and retail media, which should generate revenues of around 30 billion euros by 2024. The recently launched Carrefour Links platform, which facilitates personalised communication, plays a key role here. Carrefour will also further digitalise its financial services. The group has five of its own banks with more than 10 million credit cards in circulation – in France, Belgium, Spain, Brazil and Argentina – and sells 3.5 million insurance contracts every year.
“Digital retail company”
Traditional distribution activities are also undergoing a digital acceleration: all IT systems are moving to the cloud, enabling the retailer to switch faster in terms of pricing, assortment construction, forecasting, logistics and administration. Employees are trained in the Digital Retail university of Carrefour and Google, and a capital fund will take minority stakes in innovative start-ups. In addition, the e-commerce operations must become climate-neutral by 2030.
“As a successful first transformation plan comes to its end, we now want to transform Carrefour, a traditional retailer with e-commerce capabilities, into a Digital Retail Company, which places digital and data at the heart of all its operations and its value creation model”, says top executive Alexandre Bompard. “It is my conviction that this new “digital first” course will be a powerful vector of leadership in a rapidly-changing market.”
