当前位置:文档之家› How Overseas Retailers Grow Big in China.doc

How Overseas Retailers Grow Big in China.doc

How Overseas Retailers Grow Big in China 作者:

来源:《中国经贸聚焦·英文版》2010年第09期

The big foreign chain retailers have different methods for their expansion as well as different development patterns in China.

Recently, the news about Carrefour’s withdrawal from Xi’an was put under heavy scrutiny. This was the first time for Carrefour to shrink its scale in China since it got into this country in 1995.

It was known that Carrefour has been suffering failure since it settled in this city in 2005. At the beginning, Carrefour planned to open 3 supermarkets in Xi’an. On December 6, 2005, the first shopping mall of Carrefour was opened in the Northern Street, Xi’an. However, this shopping mall only lasted one year and went bankrupt at the end of 2006. Two months later, another Carrefour supermarket was opened in Xi’an.

However, on July 28, 2010, the only Carrefour supermarket in Xi’an also shared the same fate with its predecessor.

Supermaket Closed One after Another

In March 2008, the Halley family, which was the largest shareholder of Carrefour, gave up their shares of the company. The consortium consisting of Bernard Arnault, a French billionaire chairing the global largest luxury goods company LVMH Group, and the US-based private funding Colony Capital became the largest shareholder of Carrefour. However, the French retailers failed to have good performance after the change of shareholding structure.

According to the foreign media’s reports, Carrefour is shrinking its global business. Its supermarkets in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. It is reported that Carrefour’s business in Malaysia attracts many bidders, including one milk producer from Singapore, a Japanese supermarket and TESCO from Great Britain. It is known that Carrefour has 19 large supermarkets in Malaysia, two supermarkets in Singapore and 39 supermakets and one convenient store in Thailand.

Previously, Carrefour has already quitted the Korean, Japanese and Russian markets. It businesses in Italy and Belgium also suffered great shrinking.

Before the end of this June, Carrefour closed 21 supermarkets in Belgium and transferred the ownership and operation to Mestdagh, the fourth largest chain retailer in Belgium. 1,672 employees were laid off. Carrefour got into the market of Belgium in 2000. The total investment in this country reached 900 million euros. It also acquired GB chain supermarket, which was the laregst retailing company in Belgium. However, most of Carrefour’s stores in Belg ium saw losses in these ten years. The market share in this country decreased from 30% in 2000 to 25% in 2009.

Chen Bo, spokesman for Carrefour China, said this January that Carrefour entered into Japan in 2000 but failed to have good performance. In 2005, Carrefour’s business in Japan was acquired by the Japenese retailing company Ieon Group.

On January 15, Carrefour published its financial report of the fourth quarter 2009, which showed the sales in that quarter was 26 billion euros, with a 1% increase. In addition, the revenue in 2009 was 96 billion euros, with the year-on-year decrease of 1.4%. It is reported that Carrefour’s shrinking or yielding their business in some coutries is serving for the plan of entering into the Indian market.

In truth, this is not the first time that Carrefour met recession in China. sereval months ago, a Carrefour supermarket in Dalian was also closed. Carrefour gave out a high-sounding excuse – the store was not closed but removed to another location. However, the source said that the store always suffered loss from opening.

“Influenced by the decreased market demand, management problem and intensive competition, the required daily revenue of a single Carrefour store has dropped to 300 thousand yuan (USD 44.28 thousand), say, the yearly revenue of a single store is 100 million yuan (USD 14.8 million),” said the source. The Carrefour supermarket in Xi’an only had the daily revenue of 120 thousand yuan (USD 17.7 thousand). Another store in Jiaozuo, Henan only saw the daily revenue of 50 thousand yuan (USD 7.4 thousand). Such a low income could not meet the demand of normal operation.

Shrinking or Expansion

When China’s economy began to get rid of the influence of financial cri sis and approached stability, the foreign retailing giants accelerated their paces of taking the Chinese retailing market. The new round of competition in China’s retailing market has begun. Carrefour, which had been the champion in the number of stores in China for several years, has to retreat to the second place. It is known that Wal-Mart has already opened 160 stores in China while Carrefour only has 145 stores. It is the first time that Wal-Mart exceeded Carrefour in the number of stores. According to Chen Bo, Carrefour only had eight new stores in China opened in the first half of 2010.

Previously, Carrefour CEO Lars Olofsson said that the company will quit the market in which the ranking od Carrefour’s sale is not in top 3 and the company wou ld accelerate its expansion in China and India.

The experts says that Wal-Mart’s expansion will put Carrefour into a predicament in China.

According to the public data, Carrefour decreased the expected business target in 2009 for twice due to the dissatisfactory performance in 2009. It was once said that Carrefour would quit China and sell its business to Wal-Mart. However, Carrefour denied this saying.

When Carrefour quitted the Xi’an market, it was planning to increase the numbe r of stores in Hebei. Chen Peng, who is in charge of Carrefour’s development in North China, disclosed a big expansion plan in a forum. “We expect that a dozen of new Carrefour stores will be opened in Hebei at the end of this year.” It is known that Carre four is negotiating with Hebei Canglong Business

相关主题
相关文档 最新文档