Royal Ahold: Multi-national, multi-channel, multi-format food provider
John Dawson
Steve Burt
Roy Larke
Introduction
Royal Ahold with more than 30 million customers per week through over 8000 stores across 4 continents is one of the world’s leading retailers. Retailing is an economic sector that until relatively recently was dominated by small firms operating in local domestic markets ? in some countries this remains the position. Whilst there were putative attempts to develop international operations by a few firms prior to the 1980s, and these in some cases led to individual successes, it was in the 1980s that international retailing became a serious strategic option for a significant number of retailers. The operation of shops internationally, in a substantive way, therefore is a relatively recent phenomenon. Compared with other major economic sectors international operation in retailing is in its infancy. Nonetheless for some retail firms the pace of international expansion has been rapid and internationalisation is a key aspect of their corporate strategy. For these firms international operations of stores has matured to become the usual way of operating the firm. Royal Ahold is one such firm, having developed a major international presence since its first international move in 1976 and by 2002 had over 85% of group sales outside its original home country of Netherlands.
The aim of this paper is to explore the recent development of Royal Ahold as it has expanded its international presence and to consider the implications for the wider retail internationalisation process. The paper comprises seven parts. Following this brief introduction, section 2 considers the evolution of Ahold and particularly the changes in the strategy adopted by senior management. In section 3 there is an account of the status of Royal Ahold in its different markets as of January 2003. Section 4 provides analyses of the key implementation issues associated with the strategy of the firm. Sections 5 and 6 consider how the Ahold range of activities relates to models of innovation and strategy within retailing and section 7 points to potential future development.
