Costco Porter's Five Forces

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Top Industry Players The top industry players in the food retail industry Europe include Carrefour S.A., Tesco PLC, Aldi, REWE-Zentral AG (which Billa is part from), Edeka Zentrale AG, Metro AG, Schwarz Gruppe (Lidl, Kaufland). The top food retailers outside of Europe are Wal-Mart and Costco. Due to the fact that Billa operates in Central and Eastern Europe, it’s key competitors are some the top industry players on the European market, namely Schwarz Gruppe (Lidl, Kaufland), Carrefour S.A. and Metro AG (they operate in Bulgaria, as well). Major Industry Players: Wal-Mart Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates retail stores in various formats across the world. The retailer offers a big variety of food products in its supermarkets, supercenters and…show more content…
The company offers a limited selection of nationally branded and selected private-label products across a wide range of merchandise categories at lower prices. Although, its food retailing part is limited to candy, snack foods and dry and institutionally packaged foods, the company is still a major player in the food retail industry. Costco has operations in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada, the UK, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Mexico and Australia. The company is headquartered in Issaquah, Washington and employees around 184,000 people. The retailer recorded revenues of $105,156 million in the 2013 financial year. The retailer’s top competitive advantage in terms of technology and Information Systems is improvements to its current supplier information platform done in 2013, the Costco Collaborative Retail Exchange (CRX). The improvements on the supplier information platform include category tracking, real-time updates and category tools that provide a three-year historical view of seasonal trends and the competitive…show more content…
It holds the largest market share in Germany but has a notable global presence as well. The group operates its business through Metro Cash & Carry, Saturn, Real and Media Markt, and the Galeria Kaufhof sales divisions. Metro primarily operates in Europe. It is headquartered in Dusseldorf, Germany and it employees about 255,033 people. Besides food retail, the company’s other key products and services include computers, general merchandise and telecommunications equipment. In a 2012 Deloitte report, Metro was placed fifth in the world’s largest retailer measured in revenue (after Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco and Kroger). Metro’s top competitive advantage in terms of technology and Information Systems is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) that permits the contactless transportation of data via radio signal. At the heart of RFID is the transponder, which is a tiny computer chip that has an aerial. The RFID transponder carries a number, the so called electronic product code (EPC), which allows identification of the item and the shipping unit. Using special software, the EPC makes information such as manufacturer, shipping date and weight available to the authorized users. This information is stored in the company’s
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