Week 7 BOC Largest Retailers

3 Largest Retailers !

Thousands of retailers are competing with each other everyday. But only three are the largest in the world. The U.S's Wal-Mart Stores, France's Carrefour and the U.K's Tesco are the world's top three piblicly listed retail groups.

The world's largest retail company, Wal-Mart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962. Incorporated on October 31, 1969, Walmart has 8,500 stores in 15 countries. 

Carrefour 's headquartered in Levallois-Perret, France opened on January1, 158, in suburban Annecy. The group was build by Marcel Fournier, Denis Defforey and Jacques Defforey. In 1995 it merged with Promodes, known as Continent, one of its major competitors in the French market. 

Tesco is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It was founded in 191, it has store in 14 countries across Asia, Europe and North America. 

While the global ranking of the largest U.S. retail chains remains relatively unchanged from year to year, there was an atypical number of shifts, and dramatic moves both up and down the global retailing ranks on the 2013 largest U.S. retailers list. There are tons of business relationship between companies across the globe. A lot of famous and large company came from America. Slowly these stores starts develop even bigger and more consumer will approach these stores.

Also recently another brand, Zara has also becoming the largest retailers.  The Zara headquarters is a huge airplane-hangar-size open space, with regional sales managers sitting at a line of desks running down the middle, designers on either side of them. The managers field calls from China or Chile to learn what’s selling, then they meet with the designers and decide whether there’s a trend.





Source:
1. http://retailindustry.about.com/od/topusretailcompanies/a/us_2013_worlds-largest_retail_companies_chains_retailers_biggest_American_globalpower.htm
2. http://retailindustry.about.com/od/topusretailcompanies/a/us_2013_worlds-largest_retail_companies_chains_retailers_biggest_American_globalpower.htm
3.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-into-the-worlds-largest-fashion-retailer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
4. http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/63236-battle-royal-how-the-top-us-retail-brands-compare-on-social
5. http://www.stores.org/2012/Top-100-Retailers

Week 6 BOC Tylenol Scare 1982

Tylenol Scare 1982 !

Tylenol is a well-known American drugs brand. It is use for relieving the symptoms of types of pain or fever. The medical products company owns the brand Tylenol McNeil Consumer Healthcare and it is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. In October 1982, this well-known pain killer medicine faced an extremely crisis. Seven people in Chicago were reported dead after taking this medication the extra-strength Tylenol capsules. What happened was it was reported an unknown suspect put 65 milligrams of deadly cyanide into the Tylenol capsules. As soon as the news was out and reported deaths, the public announcements were everywhere warning people about consumption of this product and the medication was removed from the shelves across the country, infected with cyanide and retuned back to the shelves. Johnson & Johnson said

Following one of our guideline dos protecting people first and property. Second, McNeil Consumer Products, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, conducted an immediate product recall from the entire country, which amounted to about 31 million bottles and a loss of more than $100 million dollars. Additionally, they halted all advertisement for the product.

Johnson & Johnson didn’t run away from this issue, they deal with it and fix it. At first they faced with the many situations and coming up with a good solution in order not to destroy their reputation of the company and their brand. Johnson & Johnson came up with the first thing and that is protecting people and second, their property. Johnson and Johnson took the risk of loss of $100 million dollars, they immediately recall from the whole U.S and amounted about 31 million bottles. And of course, they stopped the advertisement temporary. 

The company didn’t lose their head out; they took their steps carefully. Once the product was removed from the market, Johnson & Johnson had to come up with a campaign to re-introduce its product and restore confidence back to the consumer. The company took the responsibility for this issue and dealt with it well. Personally opinion, many companies around the globe don’t really care about their brand like Johnson & Johnson does. A lot of time people just throw their brand out there and not trying to protect their own brand.

It illustrates a strength of Johnson & Johnson that is nearly unique, their expertise in medical devices and in pharmaceuticals, and their convergence," said Scott Davison, an analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffrey. I feel that after this issue Johnson & Johnson had a better knowledge and experience facing harsher issues. Nothing is easy when your brand is well known and you have to take big responsibility at all times. 

Source:

Website 1: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/terrorists/tylenol_murders/index.html

Website 2: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall02/susi/tylenol.htm

Website 3: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/your-money/23iht-mjj_ed3_.html