Artificial intelligence in Carrefour stores - Wiadomości Handlowe

The constantly changing trends in the retail industry and contemporary social challenges require retail chains to develop new sales formats that will meet the technological requirements of the future. MarketLab, which provides stores with innovative solutions based on artificial intelligence, has long shown that it is an integral part of this evolution. The company's cooperation with the Carrefour chain promises a milestone in the area of ​​optimization of sales and supply chain processes on many levels.

Recent pandemic events have brought about significant changes in consumer behavior. In terms of decision-making factors, we are seeing an increase in the importance of ease of making purchases. It is for this reason that there is a dynamic development of modern convenience stores. Following this trend, Carrefour is constantly expanding its network with new units. This, in turn, requires the continuous implementation of improvements to maintain organizational standards at the highest possible level.

The first step towards these improvements is equipping Carrefour stores with the SmartEye system developed by MarketLab. It aims to digitize the assortment management process by using the technology of automatic image analysis of the store shelf.

SmartEye acts as a modern commercial auditor, monitoring the arrangement of products and the availability of items in accordance with the assigned assortment list. Intelligent exposure analysis is carried out without human factor - but using the image from the camera, which is then sent to the cloud. The system then processes the shot and thus recognizes which products are currently not on the shelf, which products require repositioning, additions or are in the wrong place.

Technology can also collect information about stocks or stock shortages, and as a result, it is able to suggest a shelf refilling or the need for an order. The system works with an accuracy of up to 100%, acquiring the most important data, allowing to maintain the highest level of product presentation in the store.

Audit automation minimizes the risk of error that is burdened with manual, human control of a store shelf, and the systematized data allows for effective diagnosis of problem areas and for the network to take further strategic actions. The radical reduction of deficiencies and effective management of the planogram undoubtedly increase customer satisfaction, and the above-mentioned satisfaction is, in turn, driven by business effects favorable to the network.

We can already observe the effectiveness of the solution in Carrefour by analyzing the indicators of the first system adaptations. In stores where SmartEye was implemented, the sales dynamics from the moment of implementation was on average 32 percentage points higher than in stores with the same characteristics, in which the technology was not installed. It is also worth mentioning that the highest difference in the dynamics of sales growth was as much as 57 percentage points per month - in favor of the implementation of the technology.

Such promising results mean that MarketLab solutions have a chance to appear, both in Express format stores and in super- and hypermarkets. The innovations created by the Lodz-based company prove that the trade revolution is becoming a reality, and the activities implemented in Carrefour make the French chain one of the precursors of sales solutions in the smart category.