Literature Critique: When Global Expansion Meets Local Realities in Retailing: Carrefour's Glocal Strategies in Taiwan

Literature Critique: When Global Expansion Meets Local Realities in Retailing: Carrefour's Glocal Strategies in Taiwan

We are living in an economy where consumer and business know no boundaries. For successful execution of global expansion the traditionally soiled retail functions must meet the demands of today's shopper. However, global expansion also requires compliance with local regulations to ensure highest level of efficiency. Main purpose of the article is to analyse strategic integration of global and local strategies of Carrefour by a case study analysis, who successfully glocalized its strategies. On the one hand Wal Mart in 2006 had to stop its operations and withdrew from South Korea in 2006 (Brennan and Lundsten, 2009) and Carrefour withdrew from Japan in 2005 (Ayoama, 2007) and on the other hand it succeeded in Taiwan therefore understanding Carrefour's success strategy is beneficial for retail practitioners who want to establish a foot in Asian markets. It helps in understanding how Carrefour glocalized its entry, expansion, positioning, sourcing, promotion and human resource strategies to suit Taiwanese business culture.

Business conditions in Asian countries are different so question arises what type of strategy should be drawn and implemented and how western companies should adopt these strategies in Asian nations. Whether they should abandon their global strategies or they should come up with a blend of local and global strategies as done by Carrefour? If they continue with their global strategies without any localization can they survive in Asian business?

The main underlying concepts are globalization and localization. Global strategy approach lays emphasis on homogenization and standardization of business activities across the markets all around the world. However this concept appears to be managers utopia.Therefore,glocal strategy concept has been introduced to provide an improved accuracy among practioners. Glocalization means implementing a global strategy and simultaneously local adaptations of business and tailoring of business activities. (Svensson, 2002)Gloclization is based on compromise between global and domestic marketing strategies.

A single case methodology is used by the author and the case is both intrinsic and instrumental (Yin, 1993).Case study methodology, along with document exploitation and interviews were used for data gathering A single case study approach has limitations. There is lack of statistical generalizability.It is important to extract conclusion of one study and to apply them to another contexts. Although glocalization of Carrefour worked in Taiwan but conclusions drawn from the case and the reasons identified would work in other contexts as well which means other Asian countries or only East Asian countries. Would Walmart have been successful