Enrico Colla

Research and managerial issues on global retail competition: Carrefour/Wal‐Mart

Looks at the development of Carrefour‐Primodes and Wal‐Mart, the world current leaders in terms of turnover and employment. Presents seven issues of particular interest to leading managers and researchers and examines how these are dealt with by the two leaders. Concludes that Wal‐Mart and Carrefour present two different models which stand in opposition on many points, and questions whether a convergence of the two will not result in a perfect model.

International expansion and strategies of discount grocery retailers: the winning models

Illustrates the reasons that have determined the success or failure of the discount retailers on the international scene, through the identification and analysis of the strategic groups, competitive advantages, entry barriers to the sector and barriers to mobility between the groups. Three strategic groups of discount food retailers that have adopted different internationalisation strategies have been defined and a series of key success factors of the different strategic groups has been identified. The winners in the race to international expansion are in particular the leaders of the first group of German hard discount retailers. But important niches in several foreign markets can also enable growth of retailers in the second group, the German soft discount retailers specialised abroad, and of the third group, the French soft discount retailers diversified abroad.

E‐commerce: exploring the critical success factors

Purpose – The objective of this piece of qualitative research is to identify the key success factors (KSFs) of the grocery “click and drive” (or drive or drive‐in) model developed by French grocery retail companies and to understand the basis of their competitive advantages.Design/methodology/approach – The authors compare the conclusions of a review of the literature with an analysis of the various grocery drive‐in approaches developed in France. These approaches are studied by applying a multi‐method qualitative perspective comprising semi‐structured interviews with managers and e‐consumer focus groups.Findings – The research confirms – with the exception of the quality of customer reception, which is particularly valued by managers and consumers – the main key success factors identified in the literature, and reveals a real consensus among the main operators on those KSFs and on the nature of the kind of core competences required in order to obtain competitive advantages.Research limitations/implicatio...

The multi-channel impact on the sales forces management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the multi-channel impact on the role of sales forces and the way in which they are managed in a B2B context. Design/methodology/approach – The authors compare the conclusion of their literature review with an analysis of the sales strategy of a leading cosmetic brand. They conducted their study by applying a multi-method qualitative research approach, which includes semi-structured interviews with managers and a research action performed by accompanying five salespeople on visits to their professional clients. Findings – The results suggest that the development of a multi-channel context encourages salespeople to focus less on sales and order taking and more on advising clients about how best to develop their businesses. The multi-channel evolution seems to have enabled a transition of the role of salespeople from a sales function to a function of a provider of personalised advice in the fields of business development, team managemen...

Les successions des entreprises familiales entre indépendance et contrôle. Le cas des PME de la distribution associée

Les successions des entreprises familiales semblent rencontrer beaucoup d’echecs et peuvent conduire a la disparition de l’entreprise. Mais il n’en est pas ainsi pour les entreprises familiales appartenant a des groupements. L’article analyse les activites de conseil et de controle exercees dans les groupes de la distribution associee et montre que celles-ci ont l’effet de favoriser et de faciliter les successions familiales de ces entreprises et de reduire leurs echecs.