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Carrefour takes a big step towards the Metaverse

Retail is one of the sectors that benefits the most from reinventing itself through digital and the metaverse. The Carrefour group has understood the stakes and has just signed a historic partnership with Meta. Overall, it is more than 10 billion euros to invest in the transition to the retail industry of tomorrow.

16 Dec 2021 - 2 min read

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Carrefour started its digital transition some time ago. Connected solutions, improved e-commerce, store management via connected applications, unsold goods with the digital solution Too Good to Go… Now the group is accelerating this change considerably. The CEO Alexandre Bompard, has just announced, during the Digital Day, a plan of more than 3 billion euros, which will run from 2022-2026, in order to become a digital giant and make the mass retailing side metaverse. We explain.

A 10 billion euro plan to accelerate Carrefour’s digital conversion

The objective of this new budget? To enable the group to triple the volume of online sales and reach 10 billion euros of turnover per year. The 4 key levers? Diversification of the business, improvement of operational performance, training of 100,000 employees in digital technology via a partnership with Google, creation of a venture capital fund dedicated to digital technology. 

A large-scale partnership with Meta

It is the first group in the retail sector to take a step towards the metaverse. Carrefour has just announced a large-scale partnership with Meta, the parent company of Facebook. Concretely, what is the objective? To develop new technologies to offer a better experience to consumers in their 9 flagship countries (France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Poland, Belgium, Taiwan, Argentina and Brazil). Yes, Carrefour wants to become what we call a “digital retail company”. 

Concrete tools to use on a daily basis

The group is already working with Meta on the launch of an app that would bring together all their services (drive, fast home delivery, loyalty program…). This launch will also be accompanied by advertising campaigns to make the tool known to a maximum number of people. In parallel, other actions are planned, and they should concern all of Carrefour’s business areas (internal communication, customer relations, digital advertising, social commerce, etc.). 

Carrefour hand in hand with Meta

This partnership is presented as a step forward that should benefit both groups. On the one hand, Meta will support Carrefour in a number of areas: customized tools to optimize inventory management, digitalized flyers, platforms for department managers to capitalize on available communication tools, live shopping, advanced targeting of advertising campaigns, virtual reality for training and human resources purposes […] and many other things. On the other hand, Carrefour will take a step towards Facebook by switching its 320,000 employees to Workplace. 

Carrefour vs Amazon: the match is on

By signing this historic partnership, Carrefour is taking a big step towards online commerce and is thus competing directly with the giant Amazon. The company plans to implement many actions on the delivery side (drive, home delivery, express delivery, etc…), width of the range for the online food offer, improvement of its e-commerce platform… And in figures, what does it give? Carrefour wants 30% of its customers to be omni-channel (vs. 4% today) in order to reach a digital business volume of 10 billion euros (vs. 3 billion today). 

So, will Carrefour be the new internet giant? The answer will be in 2026, once this colossal plan has been implemented and made a reality.