Abstract
The drive-in hypermarket Auchan Drive is a concept which was launched in Leers (north of the France) in 2000. This new service offers the customer the possibility to place an order on the website www.auchandrive.fr (or on a terminal located into the stores), and to pay for it by credit card directly online. The client decides the date and the hour of delivery, and chooses the Auchan Drive nearest to his home. When the customer comes to the drive-in, he swipes his credit card into the electronic device at the entrance, and gets back a printed ticket with a bar code. Finally, the client simply needs to park his car in the delivery area, where his order will be loaded into his trunk in less than 5 minutes, in exchange for the ticket. Today, 6 000 products are available on the website and 15 Auchan Drive's are established in France .
This concept is a partial e-business model with only one degree of digitization: that of the process. The product and the delivery are physically threaded by Auchan employees . This is a click and mortar organization, using the Auchan hypermarket as an additional marketing channel.
The benefit that Auchan Drive derives from this e-business model is an economy of time, making the purchase process easier for the customers. The clients save time when they order directly on the web (no wasted time into the stores), as well as when they pick up their order (goods are loaded into the cars and clients stay at the wheel).
