Here is our work on Carrefour:
The owners
Daniel Bernard is president of the firm, Bernard Dunand is responsable of all the hypermarkets in France and Jacques Beauchet is in charge of the human resources.
The sector:
The firm is specialised in general distridution. All public is concerned by the firm because it contains many kinds of products for everyone. We can take the example of kids: Carrefour sells games and toys and many other objects for them and for their parents.
The history of Carrefour:
1959:Carrefour company is created by Fournier and Defforey families.
1963:Carrefour invests a new store concept: the hypermarket.
1970:Carrefour shares are listed on the stock exchange.
1975:The first hypermarket in Brazil is created.
1982:First hyperrmarket in Argentina.
1984:Carrefour launches Carrefour insurance services.
1985:Carrefour brand-name is introduced.
1989:First hypermarket in Asia and in Taiwan.
1991:Carrefour takes over the french agro-market, euro-market.
1993:First hypermarket in Italy and Turkey.
2000:First hypermarket in Japan.
2001:Carrfour sells its interests in Picard Surgelés
The headquaters of Carrefour is located in Paris, and this firm is now implanted in all over the world: Asia, Turkey, USA...
Carrefour's activities:
Carrefour is active in all types of retail distribution, primarily food reatiling:
The hypermarkets offer a wide range of food and non-food products at very attractive prices.
The supermarkets offer a wide selection of mostly food products at very competitive prices.
Hard discounters like Dia, Ed and Minipreco stock 800 food products.
Convinience stores such as Shopi, Marché plus, 8 à huit are chains of stores.
Cash and carry and food services are designed to meet the needs of restaurants and food industry professionals.
396 662 persons are employed by Carrefour company and this number increases about 0.8% every year in the world. This year, it has increased by 0.76%.
With more than 9632 stores in 30 countries, 86 bilion of euros of consolidated sales and his 3 leading formats (hypermarkets, supermarkets and hard discount), Carrefour is the leader in 9 countries.
The Carrefour company is expending. Actually, lots of hyper and supermarkets are created all over the world, espacially in Asia, in addition to the ones allready created in italy, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Greece...This is why it's an international firm.
Carrefour faces a problem which is the competition. In fact all firms working in the same sector (general distribution for all public) are able to compete with CXarrefour, this mau be dangerous if their technology is better, their product also. But Carrefour is quite a good place for this. If they continue expanding over the world, it will be better for them, they will be well known and they'll have a good reputation in order to sell theur products. The competitors are firms like Leclers, Intermarche, Champion, Auchan...
Check up of Carrefour
The great success of Carrefour in the entire world is due to different actions of the firm:
Quite appart from its commercials operations, they're equally active in the social and environmenta fields in every country where the carrefour company operates: they firmly beleive that their responsible approach is the source of their financial success. Carrefour's development policy has always been rooted in action: it's commited to proving dedication to social, economic and environmental concerns by placing them at the heart of day to day practices. Carrefour's actions are the following:
-respecting the environment by guaranting food safety.
-playing an active ethical and social role by guaranting satisfactory working conditions for their teams, and offering opportunitioes for the promotion within the group.
-fastering solidarity around the world by sponsoring cultural programs(health, human rights)
But carrefour faces also problems like competition of other firms in the same sector:In fact other firms try to discover new technics employed by Carrefour or try to sell better products even cheaper.They're also social problems espacially in foreign countries where they're implanted.
To resolve some of theese problems the french firm hasn't much solutions to improve their technology, their organization and advertisment policy in order to attract people and make them satisfied with the product (quality) and price.
the firm's news:
2002: On the 23rd of january, the firm has opened a new store in Japan, the 5th strore to open in Kansai region.
2003: On the 7th of october, Carrefour has been rewarded for innovative partnership.
On the 12th of june, the group has increased its holding in Colombia from 55% to 100%.
On the 23rd of June, the firm opened its optical buisness in France, Spain, to Alain Affelou and Apax Partners.
On the 10th of March, it has opened 2 new hypermarkets in Poland.
On the 10th of august, it has expanded their supermarket's products in Belguim.
And finally, in Januyary 2004, the French firm purseves its strategy of improving return on the capital employed.
Their future projects are to improve the organisation of labour, to implante hypermarkets and supermarkets in Taiwan, Argentina, and also improove safety:
-by upgrading the product traceability following the principle of "safety first",
-by upgarding the product bacteriological quality(Carrefour's comissions regular analyses of all its distributor brand laboratories).
They will also continue to buy firms of their sector which are about to close.
Personal comments:
We choose carrefour first because it's a French and international firm which gives quite a lot of inforamtions and their sector is really important in our society. Their products are bought every day in all the world and it's a very successful and famous firm.
We proceed by collecting informations in web-sites like: www.carrefour.fr, www.carrefour.com, www.lesechos.com...
Then we choose the most importants infos. Finally we tried to figure them out and write them by themes after having proceeded by writing a rought ID card.