Carrefour Grocery Shopping via ChatGPT | Fast Five Shorts

Carrefour has become the first major European retailer to offer grocery shopping directly through ChatGPT and this was one of the one of the headlines where I was specifically interested in getting your take on it today.

Laura and they are launching the integration in France on March 26 and targeting the company's estimated 26 million ChatGPT users.

According to the Retail Insight Network, French users can now interact with ChatGPT to get recipe ideas, check product availability, build a shopping basket and select delivery or click and collect options, all without leaving the ChatGPT interface before completing their purchase on Care for the integration lives inside ChatGPT's mobile app alongside other service partners like booking.com for example, and customers can access it simply by searching for Carrefour in the Apps list of applications.

Importantly, payment is like we talked about last week, everyone payment is completed on Carrefour's own website, meaning Carrefour retains transaction data and and the direct customer relationship even while seeding some control over what products the AI recommends.

Laura There are a lot of retailers, a lot of retailers debuting apps inside of ChatGPT.

We talked about it.

Like I said with Walmart last week, Sephora also recently is doing something similar.

What do you think of this strategy and does the fact that Carrefour is a traditional grocer change your thoughts on the approach at all?

No, I mean this is an area that to your as you noted, I've been following really closely for a while for, you know, more than a year.

Sort of the idea of we were calling it agentic shopping, but I'm not sure that it's increasingly seeming like we're, you know, we're sort of just thinking about it all the LLMs.

The short answer is I feel like it's moving in the right direction but the experience, experience isn't right yet.

So I don't know if you've used an app in Chat GPT.

Okay, you've tried.

I have not.

So you know, for these purposes I played around with it.

I use the Target the Target app.

It did a pretty good job on the suggestion side.

I was asking it for snacks for a soccer team, which I imminently need for my son's game this week.

But there's too many steps.

You have to go in, you have to find the app, you have to connect it to your platform and then you have to at Target like old school Twitter style or something.

And so then it just defeats the purpose of being in Chat GBT and using an answer engine, which is to make things easier and more efficient.

And so the other question it brings up for me is exactly how consumers are using ChatGPT or LLMs, you know, in their journey.

You know, to your point, it seems like they're not buying things that there, you know, as you discussed on the podcast, as Walmart has said, everybody, the, the, the, the shop, it's really just shopping and then you start to split hairs to understand which tasks exactly are they trying to use it for.

You know, find me a spring jacket is different than give me what's available at Target.

And I'm it.

I, I, I would just say that the sort of generous view is that we just, it's too early.

You know, we don't really know how exactly that's happening, but we definitely know they don't want to check out there.

You know, it reminds me of when we were first talking about social commerce and everybody was like, is this actually what people want to be doing on these apps?

And I think we kind of have to ask ourselves that about the LLMs.

But to your point, I think it also gets back to who owns which layer.

You know, Carrefour still wants to own the checkout, but do the LLMs own the discovery?

You know, what happens with retail ad buying?

Like, are you buying an ad on Chat GPT?

Are you buying an ad on Carrefour?

I'm sure this app thing is partially to like, keep things in a, in a box.

So that's the long way of, of saying what I initially said, which is I feel like we're onto something, but the experience isn't right.

Your note about par 4 and grocery shopping I think is important because, because that is a more distinctive experience in terms of loyalty, in terms of your intent.

You know, at Carrefour, give me ingredients for a weekend barbecue is different than find me a spring jacket.

So maybe, maybe if you know that's your grocer, you're more apt to attach that app to your LLM.

But it still is this hiccup in the process that I'm always skeptical about whether consumers are going to do and want to do.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that point because that the grocery thing is really, is really interesting to me.

And to hear you talk about it, I think, you know, it's really important because, like, in context, Walmart, when they initially said they were doing the chat GPT integration, they kept grocery off the table from, from what I remember.

And now I don't know if that's still the case given their recent announcement, but it's, but that was Very overtly said because I remember doing it on the pie.

Very overtly said that they were not going to include grocery.

And, and the, and because the thing I keep, I think grocery does behave differently.

I 100% agree with you.

And producer Ellis said the same thing in terms of an app experience.

Like, if I'm, if I'm just going to have an app experience, why don't I just go to the app and have great LLMs inside the app of the grocer or the retailer that I'm doing things with?

And the thing that I worry about, groceries.

So then I say like, okay, well what, what if it's grocery?

Is grocery different?

Like, you know, I have a strong, generally you have a strong bond already with your grocer because you're going there, you know, each and every week for the most part.

That changed my thinking at all.

And that's what I keep coming back to is.

No, it doesn't.

Because if I have good LLM search on my own properties, that's a big, you know, that's a big thing here.

That's a big caveat.

Like why do I need this?

And then, you know, especially when it's already on my phone anyway, like, why?

Right.

If I'm going to go, tell me what, tell me carrefour, what I should, you know, plan for my barbecue this weekend.

Why would I do that on the LLM versus in, in the app itself?

So, yeah, it doesn't make sense.

And then the other thing I just wonder too is when I think about agentic commerce in the long run, the more grocery data these guys have, the more susceptible the grocers are to getting disintermediated with technology, technology and price comparison and all those types of things.

So, so net net.

I don't think I would be the first penguin in the water on this if I was carre4.

But I don't know.

What do you think?

Am I, am I over it?

Over it?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think the point about agentic commerce is, is where it becomes more interesting and like hypothetical at this point because we don't have, we don't have agent commerce yet.

Right.

I think you're absolutely right that I am much more likely to open my Walmart Target app and expect to have a better search experience within that as a consumer right now.

And why isn't the LLM just there?

I, I don't, you know, I'm already having issues when I go and ask ChatGPT shopping questions and I know that it's not pulling Amazon results and I'm like, well I'm not getting the whole world so now I got to go to Amazon anyway.

Which of course that's a good point too.

That's what they wanted.

It's not been brought up before.

Yep, yeah, but, but if we get into an agentic world, I think something that I've always felt that is if we get into the world where you really are having an agent shop for you, it's going to be too much to have an agent for every retailer.

You're going to have the Google agent or the OpenAI agent or the, or or some other big tech agent, Apple agent that sees your whole world and goes out and does that shopping for you.

So in that world, if Walmart has a presence already in Chat GPT or whatever LLM, it is probably Chat GPT maybe that gives it a foothold for this future agentic, truly autonomous world.

Because it just is gonna.

Why, why would you have a Rufus and a Sparky doing these things if you just are like, just find me toothpaste at the lowest price, like, but that, that interacts with loyalty, then you know what, what's going to happen.

So yeah, yeah, but by the same token, you're putting the Amazon strategy of buy for me in a totally different light as well, you know.

Yeah.

Makes that positioning a lot stronger too.

So.

Oh man, we're gonna have to have you back and we're gonna have to keep talking about this one because it changes every day.

It's just so interesting.

But it's important when you think about the long term implications of some of these decisions right now.

Yeah.

And how thought out are they and how much do you need to make that move right this second?

Yeah, yeah.

Strategically, I, I, I find it amazing or fascinating that you have Carrefour and Walmart as two of the early movers because Walmart historically has not been a first mover.

And so what does that mean?

Does that mean that they feel it's really important to be first?

Have they completely changed their plate?

You know, now they're one of our tech first movers.

These are other discussion questions.

So it's significant I think.

Wow.

Really great stuff, Laura.