Deloitte have just released their latest Annual Global Retailers.
A simple look at the pie chart above (not from the report) clearly demonstrates the overwhelming market power of Coles & Woolworths in the food & liquour market segment in Australia.
However, the Deloitte's report, which includes revenue from all of their other associated businesses such as poker machines, Big W, Target, K Mart, Office Works, Bunnings & Masters etc, makes it even more overwhelming to grasp the true market power of this duopoly, which by the way up to now ACCC considers as ok!
And all you need to do in the Deloitte report to see this fact is to simply study the ranking of the top 20 largest global retailers by sales:
The world's biggest retailers and their revenues (in million USD) in 2011,
the newest available data as supplied in Deloitte's Global Retailers 2013 report:
1 Wal-Mart US $US446,950
2 Carrefour France $US113,197
3 Tesco UK $US101,574
4 Metro Germany $US92,905
5 Kroger US $US90,374
6 Costco US $US88,915
7 Schwarz Germany $US87,841
8 Aldi Germany $US73,375
9 Walgreen US $US72,184
10 The Home Depot US $US70,395
11 Target Corporation US $US68,466
12 Groupe Auchan SA France $US60,515
13 Aeon Co, Ltd. Japan $US60,158
14 CVS Caremark Corp US $US59,599
15 Edeka Zentrale AG & Co. KG Germany $US59,460
16 Seven & i Holdings Co, Ltd Japan $US57,966
17 Woolworths Limited Australia $US54,614
18 Wesfarmers Limited Australia $US52,208
19 Rewe Combine Germany $US51,331
20 Best Buy Co, Inc US $US50,705
What is striking in case of Wesfarmers (Coles) & Woolworths compared to the other food/liquour retailers in the ranking is the fact that those retailers based in the US and Europe operate in many countries including in emerging markets.
Woolworths and (Wesfarmers) Coles on the other hand have earned their huge revenues in the small Australian (and NZ) market of a mere 25m people. They have achieved this by dominating every possible market segment with the current exception of prescription & pharmacy medicines.
At the same time, the likes of Walmart, Carrefour & Tesco, Costco & Aldi, whilst powerful, earn their revenues in multiple markets with a total potential population of 100s of millions if not billions of customers around the world.
So, compare this:
Woolworths & Coles ranked amongst global Top 20 retailing giants based on a total total potential market population of 25m
vs
eg Walmark/Tesco based on a potential market population of several hundreds of millions of customers if not more than a billion!
Coles & Woolworths are a powerful duopoly which if left to their own, will ultimately ruin competition & small businesses in most retail sectors
And ACCC continues to insist competition in the retailing market in Australia is alive & well!
