When I visit other countries I always go to supermarkets, because I think going supermarkets gives me more true idea of local life or local culture.
Also, when we go overseas, we can go dutyfree stores but it’s not always “real thing”.
For example, if we go to London, Heathrow airport has huge dutyfree stores, and we can see a lot of British teas, British biscuits, and paddington bears, but I think English people don’t buy or eats those products.
It’s basically made for tourists, but if we go to supermarket, and we will find much cheaper, not beautiful package, but much more simple teas or biscuits.
These might not be stylish, but they would be much more “real idea” of what English people eat or drink regularly.
There are some import food stores in Tokyo, like KALDI,
they have a few british products, but I think English people never buy them,
because it’s international british products.
In 2003, TESCO supermarket came to Japan, but they left Japan in 2011 because they were not successful.
A lot of overseas companies come to Japan, and are not successful and leave Japan.
It’s very difficult for overseas companies to become successful in the Japanese market.
A few of them do, a lot of times they don’t understand the Japanese market, or the Japanese market is different the requirements or expectations are different, or the marketing method is different.
For example, as for Seiyu, they basically has the same strategy as wallmart, but it hasn’t been strongly successful.
And, existing companies in Japan which already control a lot of the infrastructure or supplies.
Probably a lot of existing Japanese supermarkets have deals with a lot of Japanese food companies and farmers.
So if new supermarkets comes to Japan, it’s very difficult for them to get products.
TESCO have been really successful in many countries except Japan and America.
They tried to Japan and they gave up, and they are still trying America.
The reasons maybe different.
In Japan, Japanese style is different from England, so it’s difficult for them to adopt their strategy to fit Japan.
The English strategy works well because of ~, but in Japan, Japanese people don’t care about ~, so it’s difficult for them to be successful.
In America, it’s opposite problem.
In England they are successful because ~, in America already many American supermarkets do ~.
So TESCO coming to America, there is no benefits, they have no advantage over existing supermarkets.
So they keep trying new ideas or new styles in America, but those new styles are not their core strengths.
I think TESCO don’t have some super key selling point, they are just a good reasonably price supermarket, but America already has a lot of those.
However, America is a big market, so they don’t want to leave.