CARREFOUR DEPARTMENTAL STORE

Carrefour Departmental Store



Carrefour Departmental Store

Introduction

Carrefour is the second largest and more successful hypermarket company in the world behind Wal-Mart. In Oman is the hypermarket with more revenues and sales. Carrefour has presence in 30 countries around the world and owns 12.028 stores worldwide (Carrefour, 2006). Carrefour founded the idea of retail-shop which means food- retailers and contains supermarkets, hypermarkets, hard discount, convenience stores, cash and carry, and e-commerce.

Carrefour was created in 1959 by the Fournier and Defforey families. They opened their first store on the year of 1960 in Annecy, Haute-Savoie. The history of Carrefour can't be tracked only focusing on Carrefour itself, is has to be tracked following at the same time the history of their best business partner Promodes. Through history Promodes and Carrefour have been competitors in the food-retail market but any of those companies were not successful until their alliance in 1999. In 1963 Carrefour opened their first hypermarket surprising the world with this new concept, meanwhile Promodes in 1972 introduced the concept of "convenience store" to the food market. In 1990 both companies realized that good quality was not enough for the costumer so they decided to offer hard discounts in their businesses. During the 80's decade competition from outside Oman tried to enter to the market with new ideas and cheaper prices, a combination that both companies couldn't handle forcing them to merge in an alliance in the year of 1999.

PESTLE analysis

A PESTLE analysis of Carrefour examines the main external factors impacting on the company:

The political factors can be local, national or international. Many governments can be involved. For instance, Carrefour might have to deal with British and Columbian politics in regards to its coffee supply.

Economic factors have large impacts. Fluctuations in the stock market, or tax increases, can seriously affect the bottom line of a company like Carrefour.

Sociological factors can vary from the impact of immigration, to changes in fashion.

New technologies have had a great impact. For instance, online shopping has become a major factor in Carrefour's recent success.

The changes caused by all the external impacts lead to many legal problems. Finally, any large organisation has an environmental impact. For instance, Carrefour uses fossil fuel in its transport network. Reducing this demand is a major challenge. In summary, any Carrefour PESTLE Analysis must consider external factors in detail, and examine how their impacts continually change.

Target Markets

Carrefour's focuses on business in the local market, with special focus on the high-end home office and the 520unit business office. (Parry 2005 22)

Market

2008

2007

2006

2000

2001

Total

Home Office

OMR

25,000,000

OMR

27,500,000

OMR

30,250,000

OMR

33,275,000

OMR36,602,500

OMR152,627,500

Business

OMR

50,000,000

OMR52,500,000

OMR55,125,000

OMR57,881,250

OMR60,775,313

OMR276,281,563

Totals

OMR75,000,000

OMR80,000,000

OMR85,375,000

OMR91,156,250

OMR97,377,813

OMR428,909,063

Market Definition, Theory and Segmentation

We have broken the markets Carrefour into groups according to standard classifications used by market research companies: home offices and business.

An exact definition of these market segments is not necessary for Carrefour marketing planning purposes here; general definitions will suffice. We know Carrefour's home office customers tend to be heavy users, wanting high-end systems, people who like computing and computers. The low-end home office people buy elsewhere. We also know that Carrefour's business customers tend to ...