Google, Carrefour Team On Voice-Activated Grocery Delivery

Carrefour Group, one of the world’s biggest supermarket chains, and Google are launching a voice-activated grocery shopping service in France.

Carrefour and Google said Tuesday (June 16) their latest innovation is part of the French retailer’s ambition to accelerate its expansion into food eCommerce. 

Carrefour said it operates 12,300 stores in more than 30 countries,  serves 105 million customers worldwide and has more than 380,000 employees.

“This innovation, developed with Google, will further accelerate the trajectory of e-commerce at Carrefour,” said Amelie Oudea-Castera, Carrefour’s executive director of eCommerce, data and digital transformation, in a statement. 

Users who adopt Google Assistant, the new digital voice service on smartphones and other devices, can link their Google and Carrefour accounts to add items to a shopping list by just saying the words, such as butter,  milk, or other product names or specific brands. 

Reuters reported Carrefour is in the midst of a global overhaul to boost sales and profits and plans to invest 2.8 billion euros ($3.1 billion) in digital commerce by the close of 2020 as it ramps up it competition with Amazon 

Its goal is to boost eCommerce food sales to 4.2 billion euros ($4.7 billion) by 2022 from 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) last year and 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in 2018, the news service reported. 

Two years ago, Carrefour and Google announced a strategic partnership designed around three initiatives: the availability of Carrefour on a new Google shopping website with Google Assistant in France, creation of a Carrefour-Google innovation lab and the acceleration of Carrefour’s “digital transformation.”

“Shoppers today are saddled with disconnected experiences through the shopping journey, which often lead to abandoned shopping carts and low customer satisfaction and loyalty,” said Sébastien Missoffe, Google’s managing director, as reported by PYMNTS. “Customers want assistive, simple and personalized experiences that help them make decisions on what to buy, assist with easily building baskets across surfaces, and provide a seamless checkout.”