Internationalization in Retailing

Compared with most other industries, retailers were late in jumping on the internationalization bandwagon. Given the relatively small size of their respective home markets, it is not overly surprising that the frontrunners were European companies. Carrefour (France) and Aldi (Germany) began to venture abroad with their specific formats hypermarkets in the case of the former, hard discounting in the case of the latter more than three decades ago. It was not until the 1980ies, with a significant acceleration during the 1990ies, that the internationalization of retailers began to gain momentum. Still, just a handful of those players with international operations deserve the label international retailer in the sense that they realize a significant share of their sales outside their country of origin and that they have successfully established a long-term presence in a large number of culturally diverse and/or geographically distant countries

Prevailing Strategies
All retail is local. Hence, the mail-order/e-commerce segment maybe aside, retailing is special in the sense that exports are not a viable option in order to expand ones business across national borders. Consequently, other internationalization strategies have to be pursued, i.e. either Organic (internal) growth, Joint ventures, Strategic alliances, franchising, Minority or majority shareholdings in established local retailers, or Mergers and acquisitions. .

Obstacle to Retail Internationalization

By and large, the internationalization efforts of most retailers do not deserve to be called unqualified success stories; many have even failed in and have therefore had to withdraw from at least some countries. While the underlying causes are a indeed a mixed bag aside from the general barriers to entry in retailing are, aggressive (price and foreclosure) reactions by the incumbent oligopolies were always a major contributing factor , valuable lessons can be learned from the successful few, i.e. the likes of Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi, Metro, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), and Ikea: All of them discovered, stuck to and exploited a specific market niche neglected or overlooked by their local competitors. They were thus in the favorable position to offer their customers a very distinctive value proposition which their local competitors found very difficult to emulate. Most of them relied upon organic growth or joint ventures or other forms of cooperation with locals. Some others preferred to enter new foreign markets by acquisition. However, all retailers which were successful in doing so, took over a leading local incumbent in order to build (large) scale fast.

However, their individual entry strategies notwithstanding, all of them were willing to and adept in fine-tuning their proven business formulas, operations and product ranges to reflect and cater to the different tastes and preferences of a critical mass of local consumers. They primarily harnessed the superior market knowledge of local managers and kept investing in local talent to bridge the unavoidable intercultural gaps. To minimize their exposure to political risk, they did not become engaged in politically unstable geographic regions and countries.

So
Language barriers aside, marketers must realize that taking their products and services to new countries requires substantial adaptations in their marketing approaches. Differences in cultures, living environments and economic conditions warrant careful examination in advance of investment of time and resources to vend new products. Retailers eager to expand into new markets must also pay heed to the changes in shopping patterns, purchasing behavior and products customers will need in the countries they seek to do business. Differences in language and geography aside, getting to know your customer can be equally problematic if the organization fails to understand the implicit needs of its customers. While it seems most organizations have a CRM process, many are not getting the results they want or are not using their systems to their fullest potential.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is an American public corporation that runs a chain of large, discount department stores. Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, it was incorporated on October 31, 1969, It is the largest private employer in the world and the fourth largest utility or commercial employer, trailing the Chinese army, the British National Health Service, and the Indian Railways. Wal-Mart is the largest grocery retailer in the United States, with an estimated 20% of the retail grocery and consumables business, as well as the largest toy seller in the U.S., with an estimated 22% share of the toy market. Wal-Mart's international operations currently comprise 2,980 stores in 14 countries outside the United States. According to Wal-Mart's 2006 Annual Report, the International division accounted for about 20.1% of sales. There are wholly-owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Puerto Rico. With 1.8 million employees worldwide, the company is the largest private employer in the US and Mexico, and one of the largest in Canada.

The retailing success mantra of Wal-Mart

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. And really, if you think about it from your point of view as a customer, you want everything:

a wide assortment of good-quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience.

Sam Walton, Founder Chairman, Wal-Mart (1918-1992)

Wal-Mart's plan to conquer the world

Failure in Germany, South Korea shows the retail powerhouse is fallible. But as its home market shrinks, Wal-Mart has no choice but to find success overseas. Despite Wal-Mart's wobbly track record overseas, industry experts say it's becoming more crucial than ever for the world's largest retailer to get its international act together, and quickly.

Wal-Mart is running out of room to grow in the United States, its largest market, where it already operates about 4,000 stores. With each new store, it risks eroding sales at older stores. Sure enough, sales growth at older stores open at least a year, known in the industry as same-store sales, have slowed considerably, growing 1 to 3 percent on average during the last three years from more than 5 percent previously. That puts Wal-Mart behind its opponent Target Corp. As slower sales growth and other negatives started to accrue Wal-Mart became a lightning rod for critics. To that end, Wal-Mart announced that the company would ramp up international growth while slowing domestic expansion. This is

because U.S. gives Wal-Mart some 260 million shoppers. The world gives Wal-Mart 6 billion shoppers. Wal-Mart may rule the retail roost at home, but it hasn't met with the same measure of success abroad. In key markets like China, European competitors like Tesco, Carrefour and Metro have outperformed Wal-Mart and grabbed more market share. Wal-Mart currently operates close to 3,000 stores in 13 countries outside of the United States. These markets accounted for about 23 percent of its total sales of $381 billion in 2006. But it pulled out of Germany and South Korea after industry watchers said it realized that its low-price merchandise offerings and big-box, no-frills stores didn't really appeal to consumers in those markets. Instead of rushing into a new market, it would be better off first learning the local tastes, scouting good locations and tailoring their merchandise accordingly. Wal-Mart struck a $1 billion deal to acquire Chinese rival Trust Mart by 2010, challenging French chain Carrefour's dominance as the largest operator of the huge grocery and retail outlets known as "super-centers" in China.

Wal-Mart Germany
Wal-Mart decided to build its initial presence in Germany through acquisitions. In December 1997, it took over the renowned 21-store Wertkauf chain (revenues: 1.2 billion) for an estimated $1.04 billion, followed one year later by the acquisition of Interspars 74 hypermarkets (revenues: 850 million) from Spar Handels AG, the German unit of the French Intermarch Group, for 560 million. In the wake of these transactions, Wal-Mart immediately became the countrys fourth biggest operator of hypermarkets. However, with a current turnover of around 2.9 billion, and a stagnating market share of just 1.1 per cent, the US giant still is a quantity negligible on the German retail market. Wal-Mart entered Germany in 1997 and retreated nine years later in 2006. For a variety of reasons, including apathy towards German culture and a strong union presence, WalMart was forced to pull out resulting in a one billion dollar loss

The German Retail Market Some General Background Information

Germany accounts for around 15 per cent of Europes $2 trillion-a-year retail market. At a GNP of 2 trillion and populated by around 80 million affluent consumers, it is by far the biggest national retail market in the old world. As in most other Western European countries, the birthrate, however, has been slightly negative since the mid-1960ies. Currently, the German retail market is in a state of deep crisis. From the 1950ies until the early 1990ies when the post-reunification boom drew to a close retail sales in Germany had traditionally grown slightly faster than GNP. Since then, they have stagnated before plummeting since 2001.2002 is widely considered to have been the worst year ever for German retailers, with 2003 looking even worse. On average, consumers spend 30 per cent of their available income with retailers, down from 40 per cent only ten years ago, because households shift an ever increasing share of their expenditure into areas such as housing, tourism, and communications. As a result, the number of employees declined from 2.75 million to 2.5 million between 1996 and 2001, 50 per cent of whom work on a part-time basis. Finally, the German retail sector primarily relies upon skilled and semi-skilled labor, around one fourth of whom are unionized.

Market Structure The Key Players

Concentration of the German retail market is gradually increasing with the Top 10 now representing around 84 per cent of sales. The Top 5 alone Metro (19.7 per cent), Rewe (13.6 per cent), Edeka/AVA (12.7 per cent), Aldi (10.1 per cent) and Tengelmann (7.6 per cent) are accounting for a market share of 63 per cent. Food (and drug) retailing, however, is dominated by a Germany-specific format that was pioneered by Aldi in 1962 and later successfully imitated by the likes of Lidl (part of the Schwarz Group), Norma

and Penny (part of the Rewe Group): hard discounters, typically offering a range of 600 to 700 products, with a high share of own-brands, at rock bottom price and ultra-low margins. At the moment these pile--high, sell-cheap- merchants, control around a third of the food market as opposed to only 10 percent in the UK and 8 per cent in France , with a share of 40 per cent forecast for 2007. Increasingly, however, the hard discounters are competing fiercely with the traditional retailers in the non-food segment, too. Aldi, for example, which has been selling high quality own-brand computers at very attractive prices around twice a year for around half a decade, has become Germanys biggest PC-retailer with a market share of 21.5 per cent ahead of Fujitsu Siemens (16,9 per cent), and is also one of the countrys major distributors of clothing; in fact, in almost all product categories it has on offer, Aldi ranks amongst the countrys Top 3 to Top 5 sellers by sales volume.

Ultra-Low Profitability
With average profits reaching only 0.8 per cent of sales in West Germany down from 3.4 per cent in 1970 and 0.5 per cent in the poorer Eastern part of the country, Germanys retail industry is probably the least profitable all over the industrialized world. These figures are well below Germanys manufacturing sectors average of 3 per cent (USA: 8 per cent). Returns are particularly meager in the food segment at 0.5 per cent of earnings, compared to 5 per cent in the UK and 3.5 per cent in France and in the super-, hypermarket formats. By contrast, they are quite healthy by German standards at least in the hard discount business, with Aldi again leading the pack. With earnings estimated at around 2 per cent of sales, the group is not only Germanys most successful and most consistently profitable retailer. It even managed to double its return to almost 4 per cent in the crisis years 2001 and 2002. The vast majority of German retailers are not listed, but family-owned by some of the richest families in the country or even the world, to be sure or organized as cooperatives. Not only does this imply relatively higher barriers to exit compared to countries where public-stock companies are dominant (UK, USA, and France). It also means that the maximization of shareholder value may not be their single most important principle of doing business. Although zoning regulations do impose severe restrictions on the construction of largescale stores (>2.500 sp. meters, i.e. 27.500 sq. ft.) and Greenfield shopping centers, they are noticeably less stringent, especially for the smaller units (<700 sq. meters or 7.700 sq. ft.) required by the hard discounters. As a result, retail space has grown by the factor in the past fifty years, with another 10 per cent increase imminent until 2007.Currently, Germanys selling space amounts to 293 sq. meters per 1.000 inhabitants, compared with Frances 160 and the UKs paltry 133. The EURO-conversion on January 1st, 2002, and the ensuing confusion amongst consumers, was (mis)used by some retailers to raise prices dramatically increases by 10 or 20 per cents were not exceptional , with equally dramatic consequences not only for their turnover and profits, but also for the sector as a whole. Aldi, however, exploiting its

reputation for great value, reacted with the biggest overall price reduction of its corporate history. As a result, it was able to increase its sales by more than 10 per cent in 2001 and, as mentioned above, and to double its profits. Finally, German consumers apparently hold price and value in much higher esteem than service and quality. According to a recent survey conducted by Mc- Kinsey, a consultancy, the share of so-called price/value customers is 42 per cent (France: 48 per cent, UK: 32 per cent), whereas only 13 per cent (France: 48; UK: 13) consider themselves of the service/quality variety. Affinity consumers, i.e. brand-conscious and peer group-oriented customers, account for 45 per cent (France: 25; UK: 55).49 The very high elasticity of demand demonstrated by German consumers has also been confirmed by a number of other studies.

Retail-Specific Legislation
Planning laws and zoning regulations hinder large-scale new entry by any big-box operator. Some other sector-specific regulations, however, also impact significantly upon corporate strategies, and hence retail competition: At a legal maximum of 80 hours/week store opening hours in Germany are among the shortest in Europe. Sunday and holiday openings are not permitted at all. This contrasts markedly with the 168 hours/week in the UK, 96 hours/week in the Netherlands, and a minimum of 144 hours/week in France. Germanys fair trading and antitrust laws contain some important restrictions for retailers pricing policies. To summarize briefly ignoring the (few) exceptions to this rule , they forbid merchants to sell goods below cost on a permanent basis. A pricing strategy centered around some loss-leaders is therefore very likely illegal under German law (but more often than not perfectly legal in the US and the UK).

Wal-Marts Strategy in Germany and Why It Failed

Wal-Mart Inc admitted that the company had messed more things up in Germany than it had managed to do right. Indeed, endless strings of amazing management blunders have plagued Wal-Marts German operation from the very start. Even worse, they hold that the company has so far not succeeded to fully remedy any of them. Wal-Marts principal mistakes on the German market may be summarized as follows: A fundamentally flawed entry-by-acquisition strategy, A management by hubris and clash of cultures-approach to labor relations, A blatant failure to deliver on its legendary we sell for less always, everyday low prices and excellent service value proposition, and Bad publicity due to its repeated infringement of some important German laws and regulations.

Flawed entry-by-acquisition strategy

As mentioned above, Wal-Mart entered the German market through two consecutive acquisitions. While its first move the 1997 takeover of the 21 Wertkauf stores was indeed a smart one, given that companys excellent earnings (3 per cent of sales), its competitive locations, and its very capable management, Wal-Marts 1998 follow-up deal with Spar for 74 hypermarkets was widely judged an ill-informed, ill-advised act, for several reasons: Spar is considered to be the weakest player on the German market due to its mostly rundown stores, very heterogeneous in size and format, with the majority of them located in less well-off inner-city residential areas. Not only did this result for Spar before and Wal-Mart after the acquisition in one of the industries lowest turnover per sq. meter of floor area, higher logistics costs and lower returns. Even worse, Wal-Mart has been unable until today to upgrade most of these stores and to implement a uniform design to build brand recognition. Nevertheless Wal-Mart was willing to pay Spar 560 million for the transaction which was maybe the best deal throughout Spars troubled history as, two years earlier, Spar had acquired 36 of these stores for as little as 85 million. Worst of it all, through the extremely costly transaction Wal-Mart did not even purchase real estate but has only bought itself subtenant status at most of these locations. It is very likely then that the company will be forced to give up a number of them as soon as the leases will expire. With organic growth close to being a mission impossible for hypermarket operators due to stringent planning and zoning regulations, the company, as a result, still lacks the size necessary to extract significant price concessions from suppliers and to reduce its currently very high logistics costs. According to German retail experts, for a company to fully exploit economies of scale in food retailing a minimum annual turnover of around

7.7 billion a critical mass which is 2.5 times higher than Wal-Mart Germanys actual sales.

Management by hubris and clash of cultures

Many companies ambitions to position themselves (profitably) in foreign markets or to establish themselves as global players have been thwarted by their inability to fully understand and to adapt to the specific conditions of doing business in other countries, exposing their profound lack of intercultural competence and management skills. This observation is even truer if foreign markets had been entered through mergers or acquisitions. The difficulties of making mergers work are well-known to corporate leaders, the affected staff, management theorists and management consultancies. The formidable challenge of post-merger integration is further complicated significantly if it must be taken up in an international environment, with all issues frequently being compounded by a lack of language and culture bridging skills. Failure to accomplish this task satisfactorily, however, inevitably results in mutual distrust, disillusionment, demotivation and the exodus of high potentials as well as of old hand staff with the well documented negative impact on the merged companies' competitiveness, profits and shareholder value. This is exactly what happened to Wal-Mart Germany. To begin with, it appointed four CEOs during its first four years of operation. A final anecdote proves Wal-Marts initial hubris with respect to its suppliers: Its minor role and lack of buyers power on the German market notwithstanding or simply being unaware of it , the companys chief executives demanded unlimited access without prior announcement to the factory floors of their suppliers, including most of Germanys bestknown and most valuable consumer brands, for on-site quality inspections. To nobodys surprise Wal-Marts leaders obviously excepted , however, the vast majority of them did not feel the (commercial) need to oblige.

Neither "everyday low prices" nor "excellent service"

Traditionally, Wal-Mart has inflicted a full-scale price war on incumbents on every single market it has so far entered in order to credibly communicate its legendary every day low price-pledge to local consumers. While extremely successful almost everywhere else, this strategy badly backfired in Germany largely due to the a fore-mentioned ignorance, lack of experience, and hubris of Wal-Mart Germanys original top management. To a complete surprise, all affected German competitors, first and foremost Aldi which throughout its existence successfully defended its position as Germanys undisputed cost and price leader , Lidl, Rewe and Edeka, not only matched all of WalMarts price cuts. Even worse, the results of several independent surveys, commissioned by newspapers or conducted by Stiftung Warentest, a highly influential governmentsponsored consumer protection agency, and the GfK, Germanys biggest market-research institute, exposed Wal-Marts fundamental value proposition everyday low prices as a (largely) empty promise: They showed that Wal-Mart had not been able to systematically undercut Aldi and the other hard discounters, and that, by contrast, its assortment was not even substantially cheaper then the traditional retailers offerings.

 So far Wal-Mart Germany has not succeeded in delivering on the second part of its value proposition excellent customer service either. By contrast the company has repeatedly been rated as only just or even slightly below average in terms of overall consumer satisfaction. While yielding little tangible economic benefits German consumers have been accustomed for decades to shopping at self-service formats without any staff assistance , the additional personnel required to perform these services efficiently, are the cause why Wal-Marts labor costs continue to remain above the industrys average. Finally, sufficient it to say that Germanys restrictive shopping hour regulations prevent Wal-Mart from offering its customers the additional convenience and superior shopping comfort associated with 24/7 operations.

Repeated Infringements of German Laws and Regulations

With the ensuing negative publicity, Wal-Mart stands accused of, or has already been tried and fined for breaching several important German laws and regulations, in particular Section 20(4) of theAct Against Restraints of Competition. This centerpiece of German antitrust legislation bans allundertakings with superior market power from selling a range of goodsnot merely occasionally below its cost price, unless there is an objective justification for this, Section 335a of theCommercial Act. It requires all corporations to disclose basic financial information including a balance sheet and an annual profit or loss statement and, in early January 2003, the recently amendedObligatory Deposit Regulation. It stipulates that retailers must provide a deposit-refund-system for certain types of plastic and metal beverage containers or, alternatively, to refrain from selling any product bottled or canned in containers which are covered by this piece of legislation.