Carrefour Marketing Strategy & Marketing Mix (4Ps)

Published in Services category by MBA Skool Team

Marketing Strategy of Carrefour analyzes the brand with the marketing mix framework which covers the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). These business strategies, based on Carrefour marketing mix, help the brand succeed in the market. Let us start the Carrefour Marketing Strategy & Mix to understand its product, pricing, advertising & distribution strategies:

Carrefour Product Strategy:

The product strategy and mix in Carrefour marketing strategy can be explained as follows:

Carrefour is one of the leading retail stores in the world. Carrefour stores & its services are its marketing mix product strategy.

It's stores are present worldwide in various formats to cater to all kinds of needs of its customers:

1. Hypermarkets - Ideal stop for families doing major shopping, offers a variety of food and non-food items at low prices

2. Supermarkets - Offers a huge variety of fresh produce, local products, and non-food items at attractive prices

3. Convenience stores – these are designed to address the local needs of the customers offering products at low prices and are open till late-night.

4. Cash & Carry stores, Hypercash stores – Displays all the products on pallets and are sold usually to bulk buyers such restaurateurs and similar professionals

5. Multi-channel strategy – Carrefour is providing its customers with e-commerce and m-commerce solutions to make them shop anytime and anywhere.


Image: Wikimedia


Carrefour Price/Pricing Strategy:

Below is the pricing strategy in Carrefour marketing strategy:

Carrefour generally follows ‘low prices every day’ policy, but frequently switches between a mix of policies. Carrefour generally keeps a very low price for the sensitive products i.e.

the products which are highly price elastic, non-sensitive products are reasonably priced and imported products are priced very high. However, the major portion of the revenue comes from the sale of Carrefour’s own brand products which are priced as per the demand. This gives an insight about the pricing strategy in the marketing mix of Carrefour.

Carrefour Place & Distribution Strategy:

Following is the distribution strategy in the Carrefour marketing mix:

Carrefour has more than 12,000 stores operating in more than 30 countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. The group, in addition to the traditional format has developed a wide range formats to cater to all kinds of shopping pattern, be it daily purchases, weekly hypermarket visits or bulk buys by business customers. Carrefour ensures that all its stores appear inviting via the use of attractive & modern designs with different banners in every store. Such steps provide Carrefour a competitive advantage and helps in increasing sales and market reach.

Carrefour has 1400 hypermarkets, 3400 Supermarkets, 7000 convenience stores and 150 Cash & Carry stores. The brand has enabled its users to do online shopping via is own ecommerce portal.


Carrefour Promotion & Advertising Strategy:

The promotional and advertising strategy in the Carrefour marketing strategy is as follows:

IBM & its partners developed an in-store promotion system for Carrefour’s supermarket & hypermarket stores, that can be entirely operated by Carrefour and thus enabling it to plan and execute more targeted campaigns and have feedback about how effective they were. Carrefour, as a part of its Relationship Management Strategy launched ‘MyCLUB’ loyalty card for its retail customers to achieve their loyalty and ensure customer retention. This card enables customers to earn points on every purchase which can be redeemed in place of cash on their next visit. The brand has built a strong 360 digital marketing strategy by online promotions, ecommerce sales & social media engagement with its customers.


Since this is a service marketing brand, here are the other three Ps to make it the 7Ps marketing mix of Carrefour.


People:

Carrefour has more than 300,000 employees spread globally. The company puts in a lot of effort and funds to train its existing employees not only to provide excellent services to the customers but also to pass on their expertise and ultimately raise the service standards. In addition to salaries, employees are offered various other facilities like- medical benefits, supplementary pension scheme, profit-sharing schemes etc. Carrefour offers a lot of options for the employees to enhance their skills and climb the ranks, like- individual training paths and annual interviews.


Process:

Carrefour has streamlined its distribution and delivery by choosing the right store formats as per the preference of its customers. The strategy of renovation of existing stores and development of new stores for expansion has shown considerable impact in its financial report. In addition to the brick and mortar stores, Carrefour’s online shopping portal has made shopping very convenient and efficient for the customers.


Physical Evidence:

Carrefour constantly tries to update itself as per the preferences of its customers. It adapts itself to the market (Urban or Rural), this is not restricted to the products only, this extends to lighting, furnishings, and additional services. For example- Carrefour rejuvenated Bairro supermarkets in Brazil to provide a better shopping experience to its customers and renovated its stores in Italy and Belgium to enhance the offering by using its design to seduce the customers. Hence, this completes the Carrefour marketing mix.


About Carrefour:

Carrefour, in French stands for crossroads, it was created in 1958 by Denis Defforey , Jacques Defforey and Marcel Fournier. It is the second largest hypermarket chain in the world in terms of outlets and revenues, only next to Walmart.

The 1st Carrefour store was opened in 1960 and it was not a hypermarket, though in Europe they were the first to open a department store, a large supermarket, and a hypermarket. Carrefour has 12,000+ stores worldwide, employing more than 3,00,000 people with an annual sales of 80 billion EUR.

This article has been researched & authored by the Content & Research Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

Browse marketing strategy and 4Ps analysis of more brands similar to Carrefour. The Marketing Strategy & Mix section covers 4Ps and 7Ps of more than 800 brands in 2 categories.

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The names and other brand information used in the Marketing Strategy & Mix section are properties of their respective companies. The companies are not associated with MBA Skool in any way.

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