Tesco Case Study

Register to read the introduction… The evolution of multinational strategies from multinational European companies in the early twentieth century, international American companies post World War Two and finally Japanese Global companies during the 1970’s and 1980’s (Dobson, Starkey and Richards, 2004). However, a new type of strategy, the transnational strategy, is now necessary to balance local and global strategy and is, ‘the corporate equivalent of being able to walk, chew gum and whistle at the same time.’ (Bartlett, 1986) This is a similar extension to the regional strategies laid out by Ghemawat (2005) in that there is a strong, shared corporate strategy that runs through the core of all the businesses in all countries but those businesses adapt to local strategy too. A key component of the transnational corporation is the fact that the interdependent units have relationships in which they share resources and capabilities (Grant, 2010). In the case of Tesco this is mainly concerned with sharing the knowledge that they learn in each different country to help their overall growth. One of Tesco’s core competencies is their corporate strategy that enables all their employees to share a vision and a way of behaving that produces excellent customer service and this is why, coupled with their large capital from …show more content…
Tesco have addressed cultural challenges particularly well through extensive research, joint ventures and patience with learning the local culture as afore mentioned but also through their use of local managers rather than expatriates to translate into the local market the Tesco values. Tesco, ‘find local managers who can execute the customer side of that approach to win business. We don’t need armies of expatriates.’ (Reid, 2002) This use of local managers addresses the issue of economic differences too because through learning about the culture and using local managers from the local labour force, Tesco can understand the differences in living cost and disposable income. In Malaysia, Tesco are proud of their, ‘strong track record of supporting local SMEs and small traders and offer a special ‘Bizcard’ – or Clubcard for business customers – to specially meet the needs of local operators. We also support small retailers by offering technical advice, training and support, as well as preferential access to the Tesco supply chain and reduced rates at our malls, to help them develop and compete.’ (Tesco PLC,