E-Catalog CARREFOUR by ARISTID

The distribution of printed catalogs delivered to mailboxes is nearing its end. In a time when French consumers are actively seeking the best promotional offers to maximize their purchasing power, Carrefour has taken a groundbreaking step in collaboration with ARISTID to introduce the first-of-its-kind personalized e-catalog. This innovative initiative aims to provide each customer with a curated selection of deals that align with their individual preferences and requirements.

While advertising catalogs remains THE preferred medium for French consumers to find “good deals, its current distribution is facing significant challenges.

• Legal Framework: The Climate Law and the OUI PUB initiative, being tested since September in 11 major cities, severely restrict the distribution of printed catalogs.
• Soaring Paper Costs: The rising cost of paper is increasing distribution expenses.
• Societal Perception: Printed media is perceived as more polluting compared to its digital counterpart.
• Changing Consumer Habits: Younger generations are less inclined to check their mailboxes and spend more time on digital platforms.

Meanwhile, the digital version of the catalog, the e-catalog, has already become a popular choice, and the addition of digital features like sorting, adding to cart, and favorites lists has already won over many Carrefour customers.

However, this tool lacks one crucial feature: product recommendations. This digital feature, which has become a staple of marketplaces and e-commerce, has become an essential part of the shopping journey.

For years, Carrefour has learned to understand its customers and know which products they prefer and which promotions are most likely to trigger a purchase. Until now, the retailer had not yet linked this customer knowledge to a commercial expression; promotional offers were conveyed through a powerful but uniform and generalist mass media channel.

It was therefore crucial for Carrefour to be able to offer all its customers a unique and personalized promotional experience that captures the best of the catalog in terms of offer presentation, while combining it with the retailer’s ultra-precise customer knowledge, the one with the most stores in France.

To tackle this challenge, Carrefour has teamed up with its technology partner ARISTID. ARISTID Retail Technology is a French software solutions company specializing in the retail sector. ARISTID has been supporting Carrefour for the past five years in the digital transition of all its communication processes.

Thanks to the technological architecture implemented by ARISTID, CARREFOUR can now, for the first time, cross-reference its extensive “big data customer” with its “data lake offer”. This enables the production of an infinite number of fully personalized commercial offers on a very large scale.

This achievement is all the more impressive as it is also enriched by store data, giving the leading French retailer the ability to offer each of its 14 million customers the right product, presented with the right promotion, at the right time, through the channel of their choice, and at the price of their favorite store.

This “data-centric” revolution completely repositions the way commercial communication is created, which was previously very static and entirely centered around the print catalog medium and its physical distribution.

Thanks to these developments, Carrefour and ARISTID are envisioning a multitude of creative ways to exploit this ultra-personalization. Customer scenarios can be much more precise, more qualitative, more relational, all expression modes are conceivable, and all distribution channels can be used.

This technological feat makes commercial proposals much more relevant and thus reduces advertising “over-solicitation.”

Carrefour’s personalized catalog, launched in September 2022 to a portion of the retailer’s customers, prefigures the future of commercial advertising. 

The initial results of this experiment demonstrate strong public acceptance: 6.53% interaction rate vs. 2.78% for non-personalized and +17 points of NPS score from the first wave of mailing in September 2022.