As we were planning our expansion into Spain, we decided to have a look at the grocery retail landscape. For us, that meant having a look at the online supermarket product ratings and reviews for FMCG brands. Our focus in this post is on Carrefour the French-based retailer but we also looked closely at Dia and El Corte Ingles where we can also deliver ratings and reviews for brands.
To undertake the review of online product reviews in Spain within Carrefour, the first step was to scrape the website data, then attribute the data to brand and manufacturer. Once this was done, the analysis could begin.
A short summary of our observations is contained below together with Excel and PDF downloads of the category and brand level data. More data is available down to product level with many more measures, please contact us if you would like to know more.
Carrefour is the #2 ranked grocery player in Spain (behind Mercadona) and has been carrying product reviews on their site for some time. What is surprising however to those familiar with the UK and US, is the relatively low number of reviews that have been posted by shoppers so far. We found just 15,148 reviews across a total of 23,075 products listed on the site, so less than one per product.
Top of the list with most reviews per sku is the Carrefour Light tuna in olive oil 8 pack with 256. This may sound like a lot some, but in the US for example some health and beauty products appear to have over 50,000.
The good news for any brand manager or e-commerce National Account Manager reading this is you don't need thousands of reviews to make an impact. Our proprietary research (Online Shopper ratings & reviews research) shows that you need just 30 recent reviews to make a significant impact on shopper behaviour. As a result of delivering those 30 reviews, we've seen permanent increases in online rate of sale of 30-35% (Kellogg case study showing an increase in sales of 32% ongoing).
Here are the items and reviews we found by Category on Carrefour.es.
So which non-Carrefour brands have the most reviews in Spain already? Well, the highest average for a brand with at least 5 skus listed is Pescanova the Spanish frozen food brand. Even though they are top, they average just 10 reviews per sku, a long way below the recommended minimum of 30. In fact, only 114 skus (0.5%) have at least 30 reviews.
Conclusion
The relatively low number of reviews to date offers a great opportunity to get ahead of the competition by working with someone like CheckoutSmart who make it easy for any brand to get genuine, verified shopper reviews on any supermarket site. So for Spain that is Carrefour, El Corte Ingles and Dia.
See how we work and deliver reviews globally.
Download our Report
Our report is free to download as an Excel sheet or a PDF. Simply click on the links below the image. The report format is illustrated below, showing all brands with over 5 skus covering Baby, Cleaning & Home, Drinks, Fresh Products, Parapharmacy, Perfumery & Hygiene, Pets and The Shelf (ie Ambient):
Download files directly here: Excel and PDF
If you how found the report useful or would like more detail about how we help brands achieve their sales goals then please: