Elsevier Food International

Volume 5, No. 1 February 2002

Market Vision
For years, Wall Street, consumers and the manufacturing community have had a love-hate relationship with A&P. Once the powerhouse of US retailing with as many as 15,000 stores nationwide, the chain has had its fiscal ups and downs. Now, though, with Christian Haub at the helm, A&P looks poised for recovery.

Striking the right balance

EFI Special
Only 20 to 25 manufacturers will be truly global actors in the food and beverage industry, multi format retailers will encounter difficulties in creating synergy, and retailers with A-brand aspirations are underestimating the work involved in brand building. These are the conclusions drawn by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Reed Elsevier in their latest research.

State of the art in food

R & D
A growing number of companies in the food sector are taking corporate responsibility seriously. The pioneers have actively endorsed social and environmental procedures within their business strategies, with more fair trade and a greener food chain the result. But there's still a long way to go before the entire sector reaches an advanced level of sustainability.

Treading the sustainable path

Retail Profile
Being big in France doesn't necessarily mean being big in Europe - not even if you've managed to acquire the eighth largest retailer in Germany. French retailer Les Mousquetaires clearly has cross border ambitions, but has seen these thwarted by problems at home and abroad.

Les Mousquetaires coming full circle?

ECR
In June 2000, at the start of its new fiscal year, Procter & Gamble knew that its first priority - or 'Job One' - was getting its business back on track and growing again. This process had begun in 1998 with Organization 2005, P&G's new structure to drive innovation to world markets faster. P&G revolutionary for a company that's widely perceived as being arrogant.

Procter & Gamble ready for reinvention

Industry Profile
What's in a name? Plenty, if that name used to be Philip Morris Co's Inc. In an effort to further separate itself from its US and international tobacco subsidiaries, the parent company with its vast international food, beer and financial services holdings has renamed itself. But will this really help the company to kiss goodbye to the troubles of its past?

Philip moris: Playing the name game

Country Profile
Despite remarkable development success over the last decade, Vietnam and its 78.5 million inhabitants are facing a number of difficult challenges. The economic renewal programme (doi moi) initiated in the late 1980s yielded rates of gross domestic product (CDP) growth of eight percent p year on average during 1990 and 1997, but in recent years a loss of momentum has hindered progress. For adventurous players, however, the food retail market holds untapped promise.

Vietnam: Ripe for development

Food Watch
Once food retail businesses were family business by definition. The process of rapid consolidation, though, has eroded the soil around many family trees. Nevertheless, many family businesses-especially small and medium sized ones- have chosen to keep their family status. Their future depends on both their ability to solve internal personal conflicts and to foster their unique heritage.

Keeping it in the family

With the hypermarket battlefields of Central Europe and Asia Pacific set to reach over-capacity during the next decade, what sort of future can the format look forward to? If they are to survive and thrive, hypermarkets will need to evolve and move into emerging markets.

The global hypermarket revolution

Fresh Foods
Figures show that the Netherlands consumers far and away the most yoghurt of any European nation- some 1.6 kilos per capita more than inhabitants of runner-up Finland.

Yoghurt is a Dutch treat