Writing Assignment 04: Global Strategies
Wal-Mart is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of discount department stores and warehouse stores. It has over 11,000 stores in 27 countries, under a total 71 banners. The company operates under the Wal-Mart name in the United States and Puerto Rico as Wal-Mart de Mexico y Centroamerica in Mexico, as Asda in the United Kingdom, as Seiyu in Japan, and as Best Price in India. It has wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. It also owns and operates the Sam 's Club retail warehouses. Wal-Mart is the world 's largest company by revenue, according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2014, as well as the biggest private employer in the world with 2.2 million employees (Daniel).
Carrefour is a French multinational retailer headquartered in Boulogne Billancourt, France. It is one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world, with over 1,500 hypermarkets worldwide, and the second largest retail group in the world in terms of revenue, after Wal-Mart. Carrefour operates mainly in Europe, Argentina, Brazil, China, Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but also …show more content…
Carrefour invented the “hypermarket” concept in the early 1960s. Due to the fragmentation of the European market, the concentration of European retailers was much lower than in the US. The smaller size of the individual European markets drove Carrefour to move abroad as early as the beginning of the 1970s. To succeed and grow in this environment, Carrefour had to adapt its operations to different cultures, and this led to a more decentralized approach to the business. Although Europe as a whole was the biggest retail market in the world, the lower levels of concentrations and the decentralization made it difficult for Carrefour to achieve the same level of benefit from economies of scale as Wal-Mart