Carrefour Business Proposal

Client (Company): Carrefour

Chosen target country: Norway

Product/ Service: The Carrefour group has four major formats of stores:

supermarkets, hypermarkets, and both convenience and cash & carry stores.

Which goods and services are sold depends on the format and the customer

needs and local conditions of each market. There is no golden rule for

companies like Carrefour that every format fits in every area.

Number of Pages: 28

Team Members:

Name Country Did not Participate

James Malzi USA

Alan Dods Ghana

Andrew Filar USA

Fabricio Lopez Equador

Liu Bizhu China

Marc Andres Lithuania

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Executive Summary

Today's third largest supermarket chain is the French company known as Carrefour.

Carrefour is a growing company that specializes in Hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience

stores and cash and carry stores. It is ever expanding and looking for emerging markets to

enter. As a group we examined what country would be profitable and successful to enter into

their marketplace.

After research and examination of many factors, Norway was chosen as the country of

choice. 10 main points were examined including the organization itself, product or service

that is being offered, Market Opportunity Analysis, basic characteristics of Norway, overall

economic environment, political and legal environment, including government, cultural

aspects of Norway, how we would approach entering the market, staffing needs, and

marketing strategy. Each point will be discussed in length of Carrefour's plans to enter

Norway.

The Organization

One of the most popular French global players in the world is Carrefour. The

Carrefour group has over 9.500 stores in 4 continents. The sales inclusive tax under banners

was more than 102.000 billion Euros in 2011. 410.000 employees in over 30 countries spread

across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa are currently acting for Carrefour1.

The story of success has started in 1959 where the idea of a retailer company was

created by both Fournier and Defforey families2. In 1960 the company opened its first market

in France. Three years later both families developed a new kind of supermarket, where not

only food was sold but also convenience necessities. From day one of its history Carrefour

1 Source: http://www.carrefour.com/cdc

2 Source: http://www.carrefour.com/cdc

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was interested in emerging markets and new ways of selling their goods to customers. As a

result they started to enter the Spanish and Brazilian market in the early 1970's.

Simultaneously Carrefour invented the convenience store and the hypermarket concept. The

company has been the pioneer in respect of the hypermarkets. Common supermarkets at this

time were usually small with narrow rows and mostly not leaded by big companies. It was

Carrefour which thought that it's time for a change in this sector. As a result they built huge

shops with a lot of space for goods and customers. The next big goal in matter of entering

new markets was the Taiwan market where they opened their first hypermarket in Asia in

1989. In 1999 Carrefour and Promodés - at this time the two biggest retailer in Francemerged

together to create the largest European food retailing group.

Nowadays the Carrefour group is headed by CEO Georges Plassat and still the largest

retailer in Europe and it has grown to become the second-largest retailer in the world. 4 major

store formats have stood the test of time - hypermarkets, supermarkets, and both convenience

and cash & carry stores3.

The main competitors are either domestic companies of the particular markets where

they are performing or other global players like Wal-Mart, Aldi or Tesco. Wal-Mart for

example is the world's largest retailer in the world and of course there is a bitter struggle

between these two global players - always searching for new markets and future possibilities

to sell their goods and services.

Strength of the firm is the long experience with hypermarkets - both customer needs

and satisfaction included. The idea of selling a huge amount of goods in one store is an

appropriate way to satisfy the consumer needs for saving time and purchase everything in one

shop. Another strength but also a weakness, is their size. On the one hand their supply chain

3 Source: http://www.carrefour.com/cdc/group/our-business/our-stores/

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is big enough to handle the distribution of goods and services all over the world. But on the

other hand, due to the large scale Carrefour has to perform obligations for customers and