Abstract
In forty years, the Carrefour group which was the French international chain of hypermarkets became a leader across the European continent. From the global front, it was the 2nd largest retail group in the world just behind the American Wal-Mart in terms of revenue and sales figures. The French chain of markets was founded in 1959 in Annecy by Marcel Fournier and Denis Defforey. It started as a small Carrefour store and thereafter gradually grew to emerge as a group present across more than 29 countries all around the world comprising of more than 15 millions of m² of shops. The spread is concentrated in Europe, South America and Asia, as well as in the other zones of the world in the form of local partnerships. The Carrefour activity can be represented by more than 3 billions of cash desk passages each year. Pioneer in the concept of hypermarket in 1963 (first supermarket built in Sainte Genevieve des Bois, near Paris), the group is also present in the other formats of large scale retail distribution, essentially as supermarkets and by providing hard discounts.
