French retailing giant Carrefour has introduced customers to a new way of shopping. The retailer is trialling two virtual stores in its home market.
French retailer Carrefour has set up two virtual stores – one at the Part-Dieu station in Lyon, open from September 28 to October 18, and another at the Gare du Nord station in Paris, available to commuters from October 10 to 31.
Commuters using the Gare du Nord station in Paris and the Part Dieu station in Lyon will now be able to carry out online shopping using their smartphones. Shoppers can purchase more than 300 everyday products (food, hygiene and maintenance products) during a “flash” sale using Carrefour’s ‘My Shopping’ application.
The virtual stores consist of four-sided cubes. The 300 products are made up of leading brands and Carrefour own-label products, including dairy products, breakfast products, personal care products and frozen foods. Each product is identified by a barcode.
Over the three-week period, people visiting the stations can get €10 off for every €60 they spend by entering a special offer code before completing their transaction. Customers can opt for home delivery or collection from one of Carrefour’s Drive sites.
Shoppers need to carry out the following steps to complete transactions at the train stations:
1. Download Carrefour’s mobile ‘My Shopping‘ application, available for iPhone and on Android.
2. Choose home delivery via Carrefour Ooshop, or opt to go and pick up shopping from any one of Carrefour’s drives throughout France.
3. Select products by using a mobile phone to scan in the barcodes from the wall of images. Payment can be made by credit or debit card using a smartphone.
French retailers have led the way in ‘Drive’ and other innovative retailing solutions in recent years. With retailers embracing technology such as competitor price monitoring and using such pricing intelligence to gain market share, it is hardly surprising that Carrefour has latched on to the innovation first used by Tesco’s South-Korean outlet Home Plus to grow sales; virtual supermarket aisles were placed in a Seoul train station in the summer of 2011.
© Profitero 2012
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