The Causes and Consequences of Globalization on Carrefour

Introduction I’ve chosen Carrefour because it’s a French company and it is present everywhere, in every city in France so it’s very interesting to see how a company grows up, how with only one shop in 1957 there are more than 15,000 shops now. Firstly, I’m going to introduce the company, then, I’m going to explain the expansion of Carrefour in China and to finish, I’m going to explain effects of globalization for Carrefour. Presentation of Carrefour The first Carrefour store opened on 3 June 1957, in suburban Annecy near a crossroads (_carrefour_ in French). The group was created by Marcel Fournier, Denis Defforey and Jacques Defforey and grew into a chain from this first sales outlet. Michel Bon left the group in 1992 and he’s replaced by Daniel Bernard. It’s during his mandate that the group purchased his international size and established everywhere. Carrefour has 15130 shops in the world (13189 in Europe, 1106 in Latin America, 574 in Asia and 261 franchisees in Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Slovakia, Japan, …). All in all, Carrefour is present in 31 countries and employs 490,000 persons in the world. {draw:frame} It has different stores: 1208 hypermarkets, 2882 supermarkets, 6160 hard discount stores, 4726 convenience stores, 166 cash and carry and e-commerce. Carrefour is a limited company with a board of directors, its registered office is situated in Levallois-Perret in France and the director is for now Lars Oloffson. The majority shareholders are Blue Capital (10.69%), Autocontrole (2.82%), Blue Partners (2.15%), Employees (1.05%) and Arnault Group (0.71%). Principal competitors of Carrefour are Wal-Mart, Tesco and Metro AG at the international level and Auchan, Casino and E-Leclerc in France. Expansion of Carrefour in China The success of Carrefour in China is connected to the combination of three factors Carrefour is a group which leaped very early