Carrefour and Google are launching a voice-based grocery shopping service in France as a part of the French retailer’s ambition to accelerate its expansion into food e-commerce.
The service works via Google Assistant — a digital voice assistance service on smart phones and other devices — and is a component of a strategic partnership between these two companies initiated in June 2018, the joint statement said.
“This innovation, developed with Google, will further accelerate the trajectory of e-commerce at Carrefour,” said Amelie Oudea-Castera, Carrefour’s Executive Director of E-Commerce, Data and Digital Transformation.
Carrefour is within the midst of a worldwide overhaul to increae sales and profits and it plans to invet 2.8 billion euros in digital commerce by the end of the year within the face of competition from Amazon
It aims to increase food e-commerce sales to 4.2 billion euros by 2022 from 1.3 bilion euros in 2019 and 1.0 billion euros in 2018.
The new service will let users who associate their Google account with their Carrefour account to add products to a shopping list by saying generic words like butter or milk, or names of products or brands.
The Assistant, which is connected to Carrefour’s e-commerce inventory, then converts the list into a cart of products available on the Carrefour.fr website.
The specific items added to the shopping cart by Google Assistant will reflect the user’s product preferences, while giving them the choice to delete, modify or add products.
