TAKING BUSINESS ABROAD

Taking Business Abroad

Taking Business Abroad

Section 1: Background

Company profile

Tesco is an international distribution based primarily in the UK, in Ireland and Asia. Its capitalization was 34.84 billion till the 11th of July 2008 and its turnover was 80 billion euros in 2008. Tesco is the number 1 distribution group in Britain (2205 stores in the UK alone in 2008) and the 3rd in World Group. Its activity revolves around three areas: distribution in the UK, international distribution and financial services (Keegan, 2000, p. 27-32).

It has a total of 1878 outlets (retailers Tesco Extra twat, Tesco Superstore, T & S, Tesco Metro and Tesco Express). Tesco is present in the food and non-food (textile, pharmaceuticals, computers, optics, TV Hi-Fi Video, home appliances, travel, etc). It also provides telephone services via Tesco Mobile (250,000 customers) created in 2003 in partnership with O2, a number of industry in Britain. In addition, the group has an online shopping site, Tesco.com (Keegan, 2000, p. 27-32).

Tesco operates in Europe with 825 stores across six countries (117 in Ireland, 313 in Poland, 164 in Hungary, 74 in Slovakia, 127 in the Czech Republic and 30 in Turkey ) and Asia with 1,136 stores (137 in Japan, 614 in Thailand, 280 in South Korea, 30 in Malaysia, four in Taiwan and 71 in mainland China ). Tesco was also present in France through a store in Calais and specialize in the sale of alcohol to the British. This was due to smaller tax on alcohol in France than in Britain. The turnover in 2006 was 2 million pounds. Despite this, the store was closed August 30, 2010 (Keegan, 2000, p. 27-32).

The first Tesco store was opened in 1929 in the United Kingdom through the work of Jack Cohen, who later visited the United States remained positively impressed by the self-service sales system, to open himself a store with that concept in St.Albans in 1947, the year, Tesco Stores (Holdings) Ltd. begins' its listing on the London Stock Exchange. The company grew in size over the following decades until in 1977 to have its own shopping center. It's 1995 introduction of the first customer loyalty card, Tesco and two years later, thanks to an agreement with it, begins the sale of fuels at service stations branded with Tesco's name. The company is also active as a telephone operator, and following the joint-venture with Royal Bank of Scotland, is active in the financial field (Keegan, 2000, p. 27-32).

This paper would focus on the expansion of the Tesco Group by starting its operations in the United Arab Emirates. This is because of the fact that every business needs to expand in new markets in order to grow constanly, and as a result not to become stagnant in this regard.

Internal and External Strengths

Following is the presentation of the internal strengths and weaknesses of Tesco, along with the external opportunities and threats for the organisation.

Strengths

One of the major strengths of Tesco is based on the fact that it is known as the ...