A recent
report on the ABC showed that the worlds top retailers have managed to prosper
through the economic downturn despite a decline in share markets and the actual
future of Bricks'n'Mortar stores being challenged.
US giant
Wal-Mart remains the worlds largest retailer with France's Carrefour coming a
rather distant second.
Deloittes,
who conducted the study, suggested that the ability of larger retailers to move
into growth markets made them stronger than their smaller rivals. That trend is
relevant for Australia as more overseas retailing giants move to our shores.
Interestingly,
Australia's two supermarket giants, Coles and Woolworths, made the top 20
global retailers list, despite relying almost entirely on a relatively small
domestic market. Out of the top 20 firms, 13 relied on income from at least 5
countries.
Growth
prospects were identified in Asia with 4 of the 50 fastest growing firms being
Chinese.
The web
was seen as a significant contributor to physical sales although,
interestingly, the worlds biggest online store, Amazon, only ranked 23rd in the
amount of revenue it generated and only 4 of the top 250 stores were non-store
retailers.
The point
was made that today's consumers have much more information at their disposal
and retailers need to be sure that their customers are happy with the products
and the price.