INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

International Business and Strategy



International Business and Strategy

Introduction

Carrefour is the second largest retailer chain of stores in the world. It has more than 9,900 store branches spread all over the world. Carrefour has multi-channel, multi format and multi-local retailer format. Carrefour is the French owned multinational retailer with headquarter in Boulogne Billancorurt. It has started its business in 1959 and now it has the second largest hypermart chain in the world. It has branches all over the world in Europe, Brazil, China, Argentina, Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But in some parts of Asia and North Africa it has small size stores then hypermart.

Discussion

The process of globalization has resulted in number of opportunities especially for business organization. Now it is easy to enter the foreign market and earn a handsome amount of profit due to the fact that states are now moving towards liberal form of market structure and government's interferences is reducing day by day. But globalization has also resulted in number of other issues like competition and many famous business organizations are succumbed to extinct because they did not carefully study the every aspect of international markets (Ernst & Young. (2012). Therefore, it is advisable for Carrefour to study all dynamics of Australian market before initiating the program of expansion. Carrefour has many branches around the globe, and it has enough experience to enter in new market, and it has planned to start its operation in Australia. The important competitors of Carrefour are Wal-Mart, Tesco and Metro. It is required by Carrefour to pay heed to its competitors and its operation in Australia.

Australian Economic Outlook

Australia is a wealthy and rich country with relatively high per capita GDP rate and low poverty rate. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, Australia is ranked among the nations on 12th number, and it enjoys the status of 5th countries with highest GDP per capita rate. In the scale of Human Development Index Australia is ranked on the first number according to the United Nations 2011 report. According to The Economist 2011 and 2012, Melbourne main city of Australia got the first position as the most liveable city and then followed by Sydney, Perth and Adelaide in sixth, eighth and ninth cities respectively. Total Australian government debt is around $190 billion which is approximately 20 percent of total GDP. Australia is placed among the highest house prices and one of the highest household debt levels of the globe.

The unemployment rate of Australia is approximately between 8 percent to 10 percent in 2012, and it is expected to decrease to 5.2 percent in 2013. Which resultantly improved economy and the budget deficit was decreased to 0.8 percent of total GDP in 2012 and it is expected that in 2015, the government will achieve budget surplus. The current government of Gillard is focused on increasing economic productivity of Australia to make sure that the sustainable growth can continue (Dungey et al, ...