Auchan Retail China is entering the second phase of developing a fully phygital – that is, blending the physical and digital – point of sale in Shanghai, with Chinese electronics company Hisense.
The French retail group’s Chinese arm has joined forces with the state-owned electronics company to develop Auchan Minute, a 100% phygital retail experience.
After a testing phase during the summer, the retailer is now rolling out Auchan Minute, which has no staff members, as all payments are conducted via smartphone. Customers scan a QR code at the door to enter, and then scan products with their phones, adding them to a virtual basket. Shoppers verify their purchases and complete payment online before leaving the store.
“In an urbanising world, where four billion people will live in the city by 2025, Auchan Retail – the 11th-largest global food group – has opened Auchan Minute, in the district of Yangpu in Shanghai,” Auchan said in a statement.
“This 100% automatic point of sale offers city dwellers a connected shopping solution closer to home that can be controlled with their smartphone,” the company added.
The company hopes to open several hundred Auchan Minute stores in China.
E-Commerce Expansion
The French retailer is pursuing new ways of bringing its supermarkets into the future, both at home and abroad.
Just last month, it launched a new click-and-collect service in the Saint-Étienne area, the largest of its kind in France.
Last year, Auchan bolstered its Chinese e-commerce service by signing a deal with digital-intelligence firm Keyrus to further develop its e-commerce platform.
Elsewhere, many other retailers have been developing digital-store concepts similar to Auchan Minute, including online retail giant Amazon's bricks-and-mortar grocery concept Amazon Go.
Meanwhile, Sainsbury's is trialling a checkout-less service in London, Coop Danmark is planning to open the first unmanned grocery store in Denmark in the first quarter of 2018, and Irish company Everseen has developed a new fully automated checkout-free system.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Kevin Duggan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
