French retail giant Carrefour is advancing its digital transformation with a focus on enhancing in-store efficiency, customer engagement, and new revenue models through innovative retail media. Central to this evolution is a strategic partnership with VusionGroup, a technology firm specialising in AI, IoT, and computer vision solutions tailored for physical retail environments.
Carrefour’s vision, as articulated by Emmanuel Grenier, the group’s Executive Director of e-Commerce, Data, and Digital Transformation, is grounded in three core beliefs. He emphasises the future of retail as inherently omnichannel, where consumers fluidly switch between online and in-store shopping. He highlights that 70% of eCommerce orders are fulfilled in physical stores, underscoring the importance of technology as a differentiator in retail experiences. Despite the rise of digital commerce, physical stores remain dominant, accounting for 90% of Carrefour’s sales, making digital enhancement of these spaces a critical priority.
The partnership with VusionGroup brings this vision into tangible form through the deployment of smart shelves integrated with cameras and IoT devices. Currently piloted in a Carrefour hypermarket in Villabé, France, this initiative features about 70,000 electronic shelf labels, 500 cameras, and 7,000 EdgeSense smart rails. These technologies are designed to address several key operational areas: improving merchandising compliance, ensuring product availability on shelves, maintaining accurate pricing and labelling, and enabling precise product geolocation within the store.
VusionGroup’s EdgeSense technology forms the backbone, offering power and data connectivity to a variety of IoT devices that work as a unified data platform. This enables computer vision to ‘data-fy’ the physical store environment by continuously monitoring stock levels and shopper behaviour. “The cameras act like someone scanning shelves every hour, providing real-time feedback to employees and the system,” Grenier explained during Viva Tech 2025 in Paris. This real-time insight allows employees to resolve stock shortages, pricing discrepancies, and assortment errors more efficiently through mobile apps that guide store staff’s tasks.
From the shopper’s perspective, these digital shelves are designed to offer dynamic, personalised interactions. Bluetooth technology embedded in the shelves can communicate directly with shoppers, delivering tailored promotions and product information instantaneously, thus enhancing the user experience in ways that bridge online convenience with in-store immediacy.
Moreover, the initiative introduces new retail media opportunities by transforming physical stores into potent digital media assets, capable of precise targeting and measurable impact on sales. Carrefour and VusionGroup see retail media as a growing revenue stream and a valuable channel to communicate with consumers within the store environment.
In financial terms, this shift to digital shelves and enhanced data analytics could add significant value. Studies cited by VusionGroup suggest that digitising physical stores could improve operating margins by two to three percentage points—substantial gains in the typically low-margin grocery sector. Across the industry, data readiness also correlates strongly with revenue growth, with 70% of data-savvy grocery merchants reporting increased earnings last year.
The deployment extends beyond shelf management to broader operational efficiencies. For instance, Carrefour’s Pénestin location uses another VusionGroup solution, Smartdetection Flash Evo, which automates the process of checking product expiration dates. This system reduced manual inspection time by 80%, freeing staff to focus on other tasks while ensuring compliance and reducing waste.
This blend of AI, IoT, and data-driven insights not only optimises stock management but also strengthens supplier collaboration. Digitalisation of shelf data makes the store a critical node in the entire supply chain, fostering transparency and better alignment between manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers.
Carrefour’s collaboration with VusionGroup exemplifies the retail industry’s broader digital pivot—transforming physical stores into interactive, data-rich environments that empower employees, engage customers, and open new frontiers for growth. As Grenier succinctly stated, the future of retail lies in seamlessly integrating physical and digital, with technology as the cornerstone of this transformation.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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