Today is the last day Carrefour customers in France can order Christmas gifts via WhatsApp.
Since the firm launched a new social commerce initiative on Dec. 5, customers in its home base of France have been able to order items via the “Carrefour Father Christmas” bot on WhatsApp, after which they are directed to the company’s website for payment before items are dispatched for delivery.
A hundred popular products from across four non-food categories — toys, high-tech, gaming and household appliances — are included in the initiative, which ends Wednesday (Dec. 21).
The festive foray into WhatsApp retail points to Carrefour’s strategic focus on social commerce as an increasingly important way of reaching customers. It is the French firm’s first experiment with WhatsApp as a sales channel and preempts future trials in other markets.
Commenting on the initiative, Elodie Perthuisot, Carrefour Group’s executive director of eCommerce, data and digital transformation, said the firm is “trying to understand our customers’ changing expectations and fit in with their new habits. We are also adapting our technical capabilities so we can manage the flow of orders from social media platforms outside our e-commerce website.”
From its inception as a peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging service, WhatsApp has grown to be an important business medium, with companies large and small now using it to communicate with their customers and grow their sales.
And thanks to a new business directory, it can also be used to help consumers find businesses while businesses can use it to search for other entities similar to theirs.
Brazil: A Pioneer of WhatsApp Retail
Brazil has been a key test market for WhatsApp’s expansion into the business market, with Meta debuting a business search feature in the South American market last year.
The firm is also currently piloting WhatsApp Pay in the country following a successful launch in India. And despite numerous setbacks, Meta remains adamant that it will launch in-chat payments there at some point.
In fact, PYMNTS reported this month that Latin American eCommerce giant MercadoLibre will be the first to trial the feature in Brazil, enabling local WhatsApp users to make in-app digital payments to a company’s account using a credit or debit card.
For the Carrefour Group, which cemented its presence in the Brazilian market thanks to the acquisition of Grupo Big last year, the country will almost certainly be included in its WhatsApp commerce strategy. As the firm stated in a press release announcing the French Christmas bot, “eventually, Carrefour hopes to be able to include a payment facility directly in WhatsApp.”
As retail giants like Carrefour and MercardoLibre move to claim territory within WhatsApp’s social commerce ecosystem, they are following in the footsteps of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) which have been using the messaging platform to connect with customers for years.
In emerging markets especially, WhatsApp offers businesses an easier and more seamless way to reach and engage with customers compared to the hassle of running a fully-fledged eCommerce operation.
Read more: Social Commerce Unlocks Growth for Brands, FinTechs in Africa
Against this backdrop, mobile network operators in emerging economies tend to include unlimited WhatsApp messaging as part of their data packages — a practice which has enabled the app to rise to become one of the preeminent digital tools of modern social commerce.
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