The year 2006 brougth surprising economic growth stimuli worldwide. This was also to the benefit of the German retail sale: Metro (ranking 5th) and the Schwarz group (rank 10th) once again made it into the global top ten of retail companies. Aldi came 11th, Rewe ranked 14th and Edeka 17th. According to the “Global Powers of Retailing” study carried out by the Deloitte consulting firm, local retailers, in contrast to long-term trends, grew faster than the global players.
Despite the weak dollar US companies were surprisingly able to assert themselves. For the first time Chinese and Russian corporations made it into the top 250.
In the top 20 of the fasted-growing retailers there was for the first time a German company, the Rossman company. Growth rates, however, as was expected remained quite modest in Europe in 2007. In particular German and French companies reacted to this by strengthening their presence on foreign markets.
However, it turned out that companies operating in many countries grew more slowly than those with a rather restricted operational radius. This does, however, not apply to profitability: in this category international companies achieved an average margin of 4.7% as compared to 3.1% generated by locally oriented companies.
The most important segments within the retail trade are still foodstuffs and consumer goods sold in supermarkets, drugstores etc. Nevertheless, the number of businesses banking on products such as special clothes and footwear, sports articles and toys increases significantly. The same applies to the number of hypermarket operators.
Even though the year 2006 was satisfactory for the retail trade business, the future challengnes are very big. According to experts, in particular in industrialized countries clients expect more social and ecological responsibility of producers. In order to stay out of price dumping battles, companies increasingly turn to niche segments and making shopping a happening while at the same time using any distribution channels available.
The domestic demand in growing markets is significantly increasing and in particular India becomes more and more important. Deloitte says that to those now taking risks as first movers this step would turn out to be profitable.
The complete study in English is available for download. 