Carrefour Spain Business Turnaround And Strategic Transformation For The New Retail Era

It is a transformative time in the food retail industry,new players have entered the scene and disrupted the whole market forcing historical leaders to rewrite their retailing rules to survive.Last global retail ranking presents drastic changes at the top positions;Carrefour has been relegated to the end of the table while other pure digital players such as Amazon have skyrocketed to the top.Furthermore,Carrefour is going through a poor or declining performance period that is compromising its position in the new retail scenario.The aim of the study is to asses if the problems Carrefour is facing globally are also affecting the performance of Carrefour in Spain.The purpose is to identify main problems and threats to the business of Carrefour in the country and provide Carrefour Spain with solutions and recommendations to stay competitive in the new retail era.The thesis examines the strategic area of the business of Carrefour,in addition,Global and Spanish food retail industries are analyzed.Likewise,new habits and trends in consumption,digitalization and online commerce are studied to frame the context and factors conditioning Carrefour's performance in Spain.Two different methods are exercised through the paper: first,existing literature will be reviewed to draw a picture of the environment and timing conditioning the research.Second,strategic management theories such as Business Strategy,Business Turnaround and Recovery,Strategic Transformations and Business Model Innovation theories and tools will be applied to build the research over a solid understanding of the discipline and guide the development of ad-hoc solutions for Carrefour Spain.Main findings indicate negative trends affecting the company in the global scenario are not isolated.Results prove Carrefour's lack of preparation to face the new retail era and raise the need of a strategic transformation as the essential last step for business recovery.The research proposes specific strategies for Carrefour Spain to recover from the declining period the company is going through.Innovation and optimization strategies are offered to fight disruption and a guideline and tools for strategy reformulation are displayed as the final step in the turnaround process.The research contributes to the food retail industry literature and provides meaningful insights about new habits and trends in consumption,online commerce and “new retail”.It also brings light over the relevance of an up-to-date business strategy in industries facing saturation and highly competitive environments threatened by disruptors.Provided recommendations can be applicable not just to Carrefour Spain but to any other retailer suffering from a poor or declining performance period,endangered by a disruption threat in the industry or in need of a strategic transformation to ultimately overcome a weakening period.