A bit like the Kinder surprise, Auchan has set up “mystery cart” operations in 45 stores for several months. Which is causing enormous excitement on social networks. What does this actually involve? If inflation continues to decline, the rise in prices, particularly food prices, has not returned to its pre-crisis level. This is why the French company filled carts with unsold products, the latter being covered with an opaque plastic film. The consumer therefore pays for a set of products at a discount… (-66%) without knowing which ones. The sale price of the lots varies between 50 and 100 euros. If there is disappointment, the customer cannot exchange or return it.
Enough to attract the most modest French people. A video from the Auchan store in Bagnolet, last week, concerning this operation, has also been viewed more than 1.8 million times on TikTok. Before spreading throughout France, these discounts were first launched by the Dieppe hypermarket (Seine-Maritime). “We were in a meeting with managers and we were looking for an idea to boost sales, a small commercial innovation (…) An employee told us about an American show that she had seen in which they sell mystery containers. We said to ourselves that we could do that with trolleys,” says Jérémie Juan, the director of the Normandy hypermarket to BFMTV.
A sign of customer enthusiasm, “when the operation was announced on Facebook”, the store “had more than 200 messages in 30 minutes, mainly from people who wanted to order.” Since the first event, more than 500 trolleys have been sold in this hypermarket, which is now trying to space out these big promotions to make them exceptional.
