Tesco to exit Japan after eight-year struggle
According to this article not everything is as rosy in the garden as we would like to think for the supermarket some people love to hate because of its “world dominating” tendencies. It explains problems in the Japanese and US wings of Tesco’s empire:
“Analysts had long tipped the [Japanese] business for disposal after it failed to make significant inroads into a market dominated by general merchandise operators such as Seven & I Holdings and Aeon. Many foreign retailers have struggled inJapan, hampered by fickle consumer tastes, a super-competitive landscape and prolonged, profit-sapping deflation. French retailer Carrefour and British drugstore chain Boots are among the companies to have pulled out over the past decade.
“The move raises hopes that if theUSbusiness cannot be moved into profitability within the next couple of years … that too might be disposed,” Citi analysts said, referring to Tesco’s Fresh & Easy chain, which made £186m of losses in the year through February.”
I have never really got on with Tescos. I don’t share the view many people have however that it is “mamon” come to a street corner near you. There was a lot of emotive chatter on radio 4 at the weekend about its evil impact on the Gloucester Road area of Bristol– a haven of independent stores.
I personally found the criticism levelled at supermarkets generally in the context of the interviewees on this programme too simplistic and unrealistic. No-one forces people to shop at Tescos – the challenge is to carve out a local, distinctive and appealing alternative to their stores. The answer is not to seek some ill thought through process of restricting their operation through protectionism, which is ultimately unsustainable and impossible to apply to all those independent stores in an area affected by their competition equally.