Carrefour launches marketplace in Spain

Carrefour Spain has plans to launch an online marketplace. The idea is that this marketplace will be connected to the company’s hypermarkets throughout the country, so customers can pick between over 2 million products instead of 100,000.

Carrefour already has launched marketplaces in France and Poland, while a Carrefour marketplace in Belgium is soon to be opened. And now Spain will also get its own Carrefour marketplace. Rafael Sánchez-Sendarrubias, ecommerce director at Carrefour Spain, revealed the plans during Retail Forum 2018. He didn’t give much details about this initiative, but he said that it will be developed in the coming months.

To increase attractiveness of hypermarkets

The goal of the Carrefour marketplace in Spain is to increase the attractiveness of the local hypermarkets and to ensure that customers can choose from over 2 million products instead of the current 100,000 articles offered in-store. How this will work out exactly, remains to be seen. According to Foodretail, Carrefour will place digital screens in its hypermarkets that give direct access to the online marketplace.

Sánchez-Sendarrubias says an online marketplace is an ideal model for customers to find more products, more offers and better prices, while it allows retailers to sell more, increase traffic and to display their products. “A marketplace is a magical place that can bring together the interests of both customers and sellers”, he says.

Two options for sellers

Although the Carrefour marketplace in Spain isn’t live yet, the company already launched an informational page, where it offers sellers two options to sell with Carrefour. The first one lets them sell their products on Carrefour.es without paying any fees or having any commitment to stay. The second option is the multichannel model, which lets sellers also sell offer products in the Carrefour hypermarkets.