Carrefour

News Alert: "Opening of the 76th hypermarket in China! On May 23rd 2006, a Carrefour hypermarket opened its doors in China in Shenzhen City. Xiang Bin store is the 5th store of Carrefour in Shenzhen. It offers a sales area of 8,500 sq.m."

The French company Carrefour was the first retailer in Europe. It is currently the second largest retailer worldwide. The company has four leading formats for its retail stores including hypermarkets, supermarkets, hard discount and convenience stores. The breakdown of consolidated net sales by store format as of December 2005 are 58.8%, 17.8%, 8.6 %, and 14.8% respectively. These sales amounted to € 93.614 billion. The company has 436,000 employees world wide. There global operations are primarily concentrated in France, Europe (excluding France), Americas, and Asia with a breakdown of consolidated net sales by geographic region of 47.8%, 37.7%, 6.8%, and 7.7% respectively.

The opening of the 76th hypermarket in China marks a trend towards growth in Asia for Carrefour. This step is bringing the company is forward in its quest to be the number one retail store in the world.

(As an aside: I love this store!!!)

Questions:
Given the over 1 billion customer base currently in China, what is the optimal quantity of stores Carrefour would like to open in China?
What marketing tactics is Carrefour implementing to capture the Chinese consumer market?
What strategies are being implemented to insure the success of Carrefour in China? How do they differ from those that led to the failure of Carrefour in the US?
Do you have any Cafe Liegeois, because they are my favorites and they are not sold in the US?

All contents of this post are drawn from the Carrefour website.