Delhaize International Strategy Analysis

There are two contrasting pressures that put opposing demands on an organization’s international strategy: global integration and local responsiveness. High pressure for global integration implies an increased need to concentrate and coordinate operations globally. This kind of approach cannot be applied to a food retailer for logical reasons.

Hence, in accordance to the research done, we identified Delhaize’s International strategy in a multi-domestic definition. Multi-domestic is a term that has been used to describe a set of strategies adopted by companies that operate in more than one country at time. Expanding businesses into market overseas implicates to act differently in each of the markets the company operates in. (smallbusiness ,

Therefore, the organization becomes a collection of nearly independent units with value chain adapted to specific local conditions. Delhaize itself defines the Group as an international group of local companies (report 2001). And also, “Delhaize Group is a federation of local companies, not a centralized, monolithic structure”. The Group encourages the development of local management teams, giving them considerable independence, in order to improve the response to customer needs.

Global vs. Local

It is important to ensure that such a predefined scheme of strategy is not totally realistic and that companies usually tend to apply a broader approach, mixing different international strategies and not remaining attached to the theoretical definitions. However it results useful and necessary in this place for the specific analysis.

For the chosen multi-domestic strategy, it’s crucial to mention potential limits and disadvantages like manufacturing inefficiencies, proliferation of costly product and service variations and risks towards brand and reputation, and understand how the Group had dealt and is still dealing with the above mentioned figures. (Corporate

Even with the progressive and advancing changing organizational structure of the Group, the distinction between local (go-to) market operations and central group support mechanisms runs as a recurrent theme throughout the Group’s declared strategy. (Global strategies in retailing)

In order to integrate Group support activities, among the years, synergy groups were set up, at both continental level (e.g. Asia and in the USA) and at a global level to improve knowledge transfer and organizational learning throughout the Group. At the centre of Delhaize strategy have always been competencies in operating the supermarket business model. Therefore, these actions were designed to leverage efficiencies in procurement, energy and risk management. At the beginning of 2010 in the USA the intra-chain linkages and support activity integration was officially consolidated when it was announced that the already existing and applied “formulas” were to be supported by a single organizational unit, Delhaize America. The shared services embodied almost every “back office” function: supply chain, IT, finance, human resources and change management, legal and government relations, communications,