Вариант 20.

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Shop flaws

As everybody piles in abroad, the opportunities are dwindling. Many local retailers in Latin America have either been bought or are already in joint ventures. The price of those that remain is rising. Multinationals are snapping up partners all over Asia—witness Carrefour's recent move into Japan.

However, retailers assert that globalisation is about more than simply adding to their turnover. Sir Geoff Mulcahy, boss of Kingfisher, which launched an earlier, lower bid for Asda, argues that the main reason retailers want new sales is to exploit econo­mies of scale and to spread the rising costs of marketing and technology. In Europe, international scope may also help retailers to cope with the single currency, which will make it easier for consumers to compare prices across borders.

In practice, however, international scale economies are hard to achieve. In the excitement of their charge into new markets, many retailers forget that the crucial ingredient of their success at home is their relative size and market share. Without enough sales and profits in a particular market, even the most long-term management will find it difficult to justify the expense of setting up a large distribution network or installing the latest technology—and without these, the international newcomer cannot compete with entrenched locals. In America, Carrefour opened a mere three stores in Pennsylvania, and abandoned its investment before getting anywhere near the scale needed.

The secret may be to arrive in force. Ahold, which has bought itself a concentrated market share on America's east coast, is doing well. So is Carrefour in Spain, where the French firm is now the second-largest retailer. Ahold's frantic recent purchases in Spain are an attempt to catch up, though it still has less than 1% of the market. Cross-border scale economies are particularly elusive in food retailing— precisely where overseas expansion has been most enthusiastic, notes Keith Wills, a retail analyst at Goidman Sachs in London, beg's Mr Barber says that almost all retailers overestimate the scope for savings from aggregating lots of local orders for a product into a single worldwide contract. Few deals manage to produce even 1-2% of sales in savings.

The reason is partly that the biggest suppliers have not yet woken up to such «global sourcing». Meredith Prichard, J.P. Morgan's Latin American retailing analyst, argues that Procter & Gamble's priority in, say, Brazil, is not going to be Wal-Mart, but cbd, the country's biggest retailer. «p"g's managers negotiate locally, their goods are made locally and their internal targets are local,» she adds.

In time, worldwide contracts will become more widespread—p"g this month announced plans to reorganise itself along global lines. However, the regional managers of suppliers are unlikely to embrace global sourcing with enthusiasm. Ira Kalish, a retail analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers, predicts that as suppliers succumb to pressure from retailers, perhaps a third of a supermarket's lines could be sourced globally or regionally in five years, up from less than 10% now.

Yet global sourcing is no panacea, because it conflicts with the need to cater to local tastes. Stores in different countries stock very different goods, which undermines the point of global sourcing and complicates relations between local and global managers— of both the retailer and its supplier.

Local taste crucially affects the way retailers sell their goods too. In 1996 Wal-Mart set up efficient, clean supercentres in Indonesia, only to find that Indonesians preferred Mata-hari, the shabbier shop next door, which reminded shoppers of a street market where they can haggle and buy the freshest fruit and vegetables. Two years later, Wal-Mart pulled out. Boots, a British pharmacy, found the number of visitors to its The shops soared after it started playing pop-music videos at full volume. Customers had found the shops too quiet. And when Boots opens in Japan this July, staff at the checkout will be standing up—its research has shown that Japanese shoppers find it offensive to pay money to seated staff.