International Marketing - Analysis of the french company PAUL and the Russian market

Résumé du document

The group Holder was founded in the 50's by Francis Holder; the group is one of the major actors of the French bakery industry. The group is also present in the pastry and restaurant sector. All in all, the group employs 8000 people in 482 shops all over the world. (Xerfi) The fact that the Holder already has 500 stores in 27 countries was a factor that influenced company's decision to expand further. Moreover, the group Holder evidently had the resources to expand.

The seven businesses under the group Holder helped the company build a network of contacts. This was because the group Holder offered more than just tasty French bread, but they also offered planning, developing and of shop design through the "Panetude" brand. The fact that PAUL was present in 27 countries proved that they had foreign business methods in addition to their knowledge and experience.

Extraits

[...] As to the age structure (CIA Factbook) of the population are from 16 to 64 years. Thus we may say that it is mostly working population (official retire age is 60 for men, but people usually continue working until 63). People have a lunch break and as we have already seen above a 5 o'clock tea, so the target of the Groupe Holder are very large. On Saturdays and Sundays most of shops are open, people can spend their 2 days of leisure time by doing shopping and stopping in new franchised Paul shop, for example. [...]

[...] Then the French “croissant” and “baguette” have a good image and are considered as some luxury French products. Which means that everyone would love to buy those confectioneries in order to adhere to this “French style of It is very important to say that the range of the Groupe Holder's bakeries is much demanded. In fact, traditionally in Russia they eat a lot of bread and bakeries. The Russians have lunch at 1 pm; they always eat bread with soup and with salad. [...]

[...] Finally, having seven businesses can be a weakness as well as strength. When expanding, Group Holder will have to employ many managers outside of the Holder family. Therefore it will be difficult to maintain their corporate culture of a family run company; with fast-paced expansion there is always a risk of loss of brand image and dilution of the core values. More importantly, Paul is a medium-sized company competing against the giants of the food and beverage industry such as KFC and McDonalds which will always require them to constantly innovate and fight for market share. [...]

[...] These companies see Russia as a large and constantly growing consumption market. During the last 10 years there are a number of European franchises that entered the Russian market and function successfully. Such as "Baskin Robbins", "English First", "Carlo Pazolini", "Kodak", "Sbarro" "Subway", "Xerox" etc. Opening new the Groupe Holder's franchises in Russia could be a very good point for the company's brand image. In fact, international franchising provokes large international investments in Russian economy. By increasing the general culture of entrepreneurial relations. [...]

[...] - Thanks to the use of external resources, (eg. Financial, Management), the business development is much faster compared to other systems of business. The disadvantages of franchising the Groupe Holder Some franchisees could give the brand a bad reputation, especially in developing countries like Russia, where the notion of differs from France for example. Franchising as a pyramid scheme: Some companies try to make money by just collecting franchise fees, and they won't spend the time or money necessary to help their existing franchises succeed in the long term. [...]