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Innovation in retail internationalisation: Tesco in the USA

Innovation in retail internationalisation: Tesco in the USA
Innovation in retail internationalisation: Tesco in the USA
This paper examines the market entry of the UK’s largest retailer (Tesco) into the USA. Tesco’s launch of a new brand – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets – in virgin territory is a bold move, notwithstanding the firm’s considerable success with its overseas investment strategy (which within ten years has resulted in more than 50% of the firm’s operating space being outside its ‘home’ market). The paper contextualises the study by taking a historical view of innovation in the retail industry, which reveals that generally - and certainly for the most part of the twentieth century – innovations have dominantly flowed from the US to the UK. The paper suggests that Tesco’s US experiment is unusual both in terms of the innovatory aspects of its market entry and the reversal in that conventional direction of knowledge transfer. The Fresh & Easy story is then examined in terms of ten ‘dimensions of innovation’ involved in the market entry. The paper concludes by drawing out from these ‘dimensions of innovation’ a number of important issues for management scholarship raised by the study, stressing the need to incorporate insights from a wider social science literature
retail internationalisation, retail innovation, market entry, tesco, fresh & easy, usa
0959-3969
331-347
Lowe, Michelle
ef0bda2e-3e2c-428f-9c0b-cc8551ff255e
Wrigley, Neil
e8e2986a-fbf0-4b27-9eef-1b5e6a137805
Lowe, Michelle
ef0bda2e-3e2c-428f-9c0b-cc8551ff255e
Wrigley, Neil
e8e2986a-fbf0-4b27-9eef-1b5e6a137805

Lowe, Michelle and Wrigley, Neil (2009) Innovation in retail internationalisation: Tesco in the USA. International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 19 (4), 331-347. (doi:10.1080/09593960903331337).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper examines the market entry of the UK’s largest retailer (Tesco) into the USA. Tesco’s launch of a new brand – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets – in virgin territory is a bold move, notwithstanding the firm’s considerable success with its overseas investment strategy (which within ten years has resulted in more than 50% of the firm’s operating space being outside its ‘home’ market). The paper contextualises the study by taking a historical view of innovation in the retail industry, which reveals that generally - and certainly for the most part of the twentieth century – innovations have dominantly flowed from the US to the UK. The paper suggests that Tesco’s US experiment is unusual both in terms of the innovatory aspects of its market entry and the reversal in that conventional direction of knowledge transfer. The Fresh & Easy story is then examined in terms of ten ‘dimensions of innovation’ involved in the market entry. The paper concludes by drawing out from these ‘dimensions of innovation’ a number of important issues for management scholarship raised by the study, stressing the need to incorporate insights from a wider social science literature

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More information

Published date: 11 September 2009
Keywords: retail internationalisation, retail innovation, market entry, tesco, fresh & easy, usa

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 79420
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/79420
ISSN: 0959-3969
PURE UUID: 0feccf3b-58bc-4aa1-80c5-782416d08ff5
ORCID for Neil Wrigley: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-3967-5668

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 16 Mar 2010
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:34

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Contributors

Author: Michelle Lowe
Author: Neil Wrigley ORCID iD

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