Transnational Retailers Research Articles

Introduction: Transnational retail and the global economy

Introduction: Transnational retail and the global economy

Host economy impacts of transnational retail: the research agenda

The last decade has witnessed an acceleration of retail foreign direct investment into a range of emerging markets across East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, led by a small cohort of food and general merchandise retailers from Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, North America. While these investment flows have had profound developmental impacts in host economies, research in this area is still in its infancy. This article therefore maps out a detailed research agenda with respect to the host economy impacts of transnational retailing. After setting the scene empirically and conceptually, the article considers different dimensions of these impacts on retail competitiveness, supply chain dynamics, consumption practices and consumer/civil society, institutional and regulatory frameworks and, reciprocally, on the retail transnational corporations themselves. It concludes by calling for a concerted interdisciplinary research effort into this important and understudied aspect of economic globalization.

Regulatory Responses to Large-format Transnational Retail in South-east Asian Cities

Aggressive internationalisation by transnational chains is changing the face of the urban environment in much of emerging Asia. In south-east Asia, the period following the Asian financial crisis of 1997 provided an opportunity for the penetration of these transnational chains, particularly in the large-format retail sector-a development that has since presented planners and policy-makers with some difficult choices. This article inventories the differing policy responses of the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in the wake of the rapid spread of these transnational retail chains into their urban areas, with the aim to understand better the relative import and impact of these nascent regulatory frameworks.

Environmental Certification of Forests in Mexico: The Political Ecology of a Nongovernmental Market Intervention

The certification of the environmental and social characteristics of a product's production process is emerging as a significant transnational, nongovernmental, market-based approach to environmental regulation and development. Using conventions analysis and commodity network analysis, this article examines the political ecology of one such market intervention. After only a decade, environmental certification of forests has spread to cover a significant portion of the world's logged forests, major wood retailers increasingly require it, and international environmental organizations strongly support it. In Mexico, where 12 percent of the wood harvest is certified, certification requires forest managers to make substantial improvements to the social and environmental aspects of forest management. Actors in the Mexican wood commodity network include forest villagers, forest managers, wood processors, government regulators, and transnational wood retailers. These actors express an array of environmental concerns, social values, and interests in price and market share. The big retailers, however, are the most powerful actors in the commodity network, and their demands for high volumes and low prices dominate. As a result, forest certification has so far failed to generate prices that permit forest managers to cover the costs of certification and its required forest management improvements; the instrument imposes requirements on southern producers without rewarding them for their increased efforts. In addition to the equity issues, these features of the commodity network limit the adoption of forest certification—and the forest management improvements it generates—to only the largest forest management operations in Mexico. The case of Mexico suggests broader limitations to nongovernmental, market-based approaches to environmental governance and development. These need to be less naïve about the ability of product certification to insert values in markets governed by powerful actors like retailers. Including rules modeled on Fair Trade will extend their reach, equity, and efficacy; nevertheless, voluntary market-based instruments cannot replace a more direct government role in environmental regulation and development projects.

The Strategic Localization of Transnational Retailers: The Case of Samsung-Tesco in South Korea

This article contributes to the small but growing geographic literature on the internationalization of retailing by exploring the strategic localization of transnational retailers. While it has long been recognized that firms in many different sectors localize their activities to meet the requirements of different national and local markets, the imperative is particularly strong for retail transnational corporations (TNCs) because of the extremely high territorial embeddedness of their activities. This embeddedness can be seen through the ways in which retailers seek to establish and maintain extensive store networks, adapt their offerings to various cultures of consumption, and manage the proliferation of connections to the local supply base. We illustrate these conceptual arguments through a case study of the Samsung-Tesco joint venture in South Korea, profiling three particular aspects of Samsung-Tesco’s strategic localization: the localization of products, the localization of sourcing, and the localization of staffing and strategic decision making. In conclusion, we argue that the strategic localization of transnational retailers needs to be conceptualized as a dynamic that evolves over time after initial inward investment and that localization should be seen as a two-way dynamic that has the potential to have a wider impact on the parent corporation.

GATS and Transnational Retailing: Few Concerns and Challenges

The General Agreement on Trade on Services (GATS) has opened up opportunities before the entrepreneurs of the developing countries to participate in international trade as one of the many small suppliers to the global retail chains. The transnational retailers now optimize their return on capital by integrating global supply chain with their retail outlets spread world wide. Goods; commodities and services are increasingly sourced from low cost offshore destinations. While this model of transnational retailing has been developed purely on economic logic, it ignores social and ethical issues. Various research findings highlights these limitations of this model. Now the challenge before the stake holders of this trading system is to develop a more acceptable model by incorporating social and ethical parameters into it. Any model which is socially unsustainable would find it difficult to sustain itself in the long run, purely on economic strength.The paper has been divided into two parts. Part-I deals with the basic concepts of GATS, the driving forces behind the retail boom and the theoretical construct of the retail model. In Part II, we analyzed some of the concerns expressed world wide against organized retailing and tried to identify the limitations of this business model. As global consolidation is more pronounced in food business, we focused our discussion mainly on food retailing sector though few examples from apparel sector are also cited.

Changes in Competitive Environment in the Russian Markets (The Case of Retailing Chains)

Fundamental changes have occurred in the competitive environment in the Russian retailing market in the beginning of 2000s. New Russian retailing chains are expanding to occupy the place of independent stores and open-air markets. However, they face a serious challenge. The first transnational retailers have already entered the domestic market. More of them are expected to invest huge money into the Russian economy. A redistribution of markets is on the agenda for the next 3-4 years. What does it mean for Russian leading sellers? Will they survive or leave the market as it happened with local retailing chains in Eastern Europe? What kind of business strategies are elaborated to meet the challenge of the new competitive environment? These are the issues for investigation in the paper. A major data source comes from two series of in-depth interviews conducted with owners and top managers of 38 companies, which are members of two business associations - RATEC and ACORT.