Management Strategies of Carrefour and Ito-Yokado in China: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This research aims to provide an overview of management strategies of French hypermarket Carrefour and Japanese general merchandise store Ito-Yokado in China. In recent years, the Chinese economy has shown profound changes. With numerous foreign enterprises entering the retail market, the competition is especially keen among them. To capture greater market share, Carrefour and Ito-Yokado adapted their management strategies for China. On the one hand, Carrefour entered many cities thanks to their good relationship with local governments, and opened a number of stores. On the other hand, Ito-Yokado, which stands firmly by its dominant strategy, has opened stores in only two cities, and the number of new stores opened is not increasing as fast as Carrefour. The human resource strategies of Carrefour and Ito-Yokado are different; while the former gives personnel authority to the local level, emphasizes intensive training and promotes more Chinese employees to store manager’s position, the latter leaves the personnel authority to headquarters, educates employees through daily conferences, and has a slower rate of promotion than the former. The paper concludes that one reason that Ito- Yokado localizes less human resource management than Carrefour may be due to its corporate culture and Japanese company’s behavioral norms. The paper also points out some future research themes.