The Carrefour Group has announced its new data and retail media strategy, with the launch of Carrefour Links. Intended for the group’s partner companies, this platform aims at better meeting clients’ expectations by creating more personalized and more relevant experiences, in the stores and online. The platform relies on the technology of three of Carrefour’s partners, each a leader in its own field: Criteo, Google and LiveRamp.
The launch of Carrefour Links represents a turning point in the digital transformation of the group.
After three years of successful digital transformation, Carrefour opens a new sector of activity focused on data
Three years ago, the e-commerce offer of Carrefour was split between several different internet sites, creating complexity for the client, while customer data was hosted on servers with limited capacity, constraining real-time analysis possibilities. The Carrefour 2022 project gives priority to technology and data, by investing 2.8 billion euros [3.34 billion USD] on digital development over 5 years. In 2018 and 2019, Carrefour created the largest data lake in Europe, recruiting hundreds of data scientists in the different countries of the group, migrating 25% of its applications to the Cloud (by the end of 2020), and implementing tools for data analysis and security.
In parallel, the group has accelerated its digital efforts. In 2020, its Carrefour.fr site became the most visited food site in France (15 million unique visitors per month during the last trimester of 2020. Source: Fevad).
This digital and data turning point now allows Carrefour to open a new sector of activity, data and retail media, with the creation of the Carrefour Links platform.
Carrefour Links allows Carrefour’s industrial partners access to detailed knowledge about the expectations of the Carrefour clientele
In a context where e-commerce is making unprecedented progress, 80% of the Carrefour customers claim to want a personalized offer, more adapted to their expectations. They also want personalized attention at every stage of their shopping experience. It is in order to meet this demand from consumers that Carrefour created Carrefour Links, a set of unique solutions for analyzing and personalizing the customer experience, capitalizing on three of its strengths:
- its expertise in technology and data,
- its position as the European leader in customer knowledge, with 80 millions households in the world shopping at Carrefour each year,
- its e-commerce food site carrefour.fr, most visited site in France.
Carrefour Links combines Carrefour’s expertise in retail with the best technologies available in terms of data security, storage and treatment, around four families of solutions:
○ Capture: finding new clients and prospects for a brand.
○ Convert: making the experience more fluid, in order to improve the conversion throughout the shopping experience (online, but also in all channels with the right offer at the right time).
○ Converse: developing a sustainable relationship with Carrefour’s customers.
○ Comprehend: managing activity and performances in a modern and autonomous way, with 360 vision on the client’s purchasing journey.
Carrefour Links helps partner companies measure their marketing campaigns “from the beginning to the end”, from advertising to in-store transactions. A study of the Boston Consulting Group and Google shows that by using artificial intelligence and data analysis on a large scale, as with Carrefour Links, Carrefour’s partner companies can generate a growth of over 10% of their revenue, thanks to models predicting the demand, more relevant local assortments and more personalized customer services.
The global retail media market is now estimated at 30 billion euros [36 billion USD]. In France, it is estimated at 500 million euros [596 million USD] (source: SRI) and shows a 20% growth per year. Carrefour already is a pioneer in this booming market. Its retail media operations recorded a growth of more than 50% in France in 2020.
By partnering with global technological leaders in these fields (Criteo, Google and LiveRamp), Carrefour Links has the best offer on the market
The Carrefour Links solutions are co-developed with the best technological partners of the market in the world:
○ Criteo, the global leader in retail media solutions, helping retailers to get the best value out of their inventory and data, and allowing for more proximity between consumers and their purchasing act.
○ Google, one of the largest Cloud providers in the world.
○ LiveRamp, the leading data connectivity platform for secure and efficient data usage.
Criteo: Carrefour confirms its collaboration initiated in 2014 with Criteo, by setting up an international partnership of 3 years starting in 2021. This partnership will allow advertisers to promote their products using innovative and increasingly personalized content, to the clients of the group, on all its applications and sites.
Google: partners since 2018, the two groups strengthen their collaboration in 2021 by signing a new global contract whose ambition is to allow Carrefour to become a 100% cloud company on all its markets.
LiveRamp: signed in 2021, the partnership with LiveRamo allows for robust data collaborations, and gives access to data and innovation analysis capabilities, thanks to the SafeHaven platform.
For more information:
links.carrefour.com