), it remains difficult in practice. The acquisition of Catteau for Tesco and the subsequent years (i.e.1992‐1997) marked a continuous process of management dissatisfaction with the French operations. This dissatisfaction generated negative press commentary, but also weakened management and investor confidence and visibly undermined the strategic credibility of the company. The company's most high profile divestment had led to management evaluating progressive store‐by‐store expansion not with a view of proactively developing an exit strategy in the planning and due diligence phase of expansion as the following management viewpoint suggests:
… but with a view to our investment being underpinned by assets. Now that comes back to my point about the long‐term liability of assets. If you are in a market where the currency devalues and the asset value diminishes in this unstable environment – that is a due diligence mistake. Rather retail multinationals must invest in assets which are underpinned by asset value rather than nebulous goodwill in the context of organic growth.
In central and eastern Europe the company divested approximately 20 small‐scale stores while recouping the initial investment. Again, by way of illustration, management commented:
If you acquire good assets, then you can exit without losing money. Now that may seem an obvious thing to say but in our desire to generate pace in our development programme we allow that to let us compromise on the quality of assets that we are providing. We would never build a second rate store in a second rate location. I think we have benefited from the fact we acquired small store operations internationally. This has helped us understand more about the market and given us a step on the ladder. Some have argued that it was chaos, but we feel it has helped us on the people side in particular. Moving forward I think it's less important because we have the experience.
Contrary to what is commonly emphasised in the literature, learning does not need to be exclusively related to difficulties or problems, it may also refer to what has gone right in a firm. For example, in later years success of the new hypermarket concept has played an important role for the continuity of the learning processes of Tesco's internationalisation process.
Locus of control experience. In the early phases of international development Tesco did not have a clear idea of the corporate model in which to transfer their core competencies. Retaining the essence of the UK company's core competencies was problematic given the local spatial nature of food retailing and the lack of awareness of the Tesco brand name. Several analysts noted that when Tesco acquired Catteau in France they did not fully understand how they would integrate and control the business. Put differently, whether or not they were trying to replicate themselves focusing on corporate brand, format adoption and culture or using a financial holding company structure. One sell‐side analyst stated that:
The life cycle argument is that initially there is logic being a holding company. However, eventually the company will have to add value. Tesco were caught in the middle and unsure which worked best. This was compounded by the view that the cycle for international retailers was getting shorter with emphasis of adding value immediately after the acquisition.
This led to indecision with the Catteau acquisition. For example, the company experimented with integrating some brands under the Tesco brand but then decided to retain the local brand. These mistakes made Tesco establish a clearer idea regarding how and why their international businesses would succeed or fail. Tesco underwent a gradual withdrawal from a number of local tasks, while at the same time re‐establishing ownership of important central functions. Following their second entry into Ireland, the company had a much clearer vision. Even though the Irish government insisted Tesco retain a regional headquarters, the company were determined that they would adopt a more industrial corporate model. However, as several analysts pointed out:
To replicate and duplicate identity across the world puts more pressure on the business, tends to be much slower – replicating product offers, merchandising policies, staff training, culture, etc.
These early mistakes provided a firmer setting within which subsequent strategic decisions could be addressed more confidently. Learning how to strike a sustainable balance between the two was an important lesson learned by Tesco.
Experience with learning structures and processes. Ascertaining whether a firm possesses an intent to learn is an important factor influencing their learning behaviour (Tsang, 1999). Intention relates to commitment. On the surface it appears that Tesco possessed a learning intent, however, it is questionable whether this learning genuinely went beyond the “official corporate line” at least in the early phases of internationalisation. When management were asked to discuss the structures and processes through which the international learning was disseminated back to the UK market, critically there appeared to be no planned, structured, nor systematic mechanisms or formal processes for capitalising on this learning. The company's acquisition of Catteau in France did not prove to be the platform from which to inspire experimentation abroad. Nevertheless, the next phase of the company's expansion into central and eastern Europe coincided with the company's ambition to broaden their non‐food merchandise in the UK market. The impetus was then on the diffusion of what the company had learned from developing a new format which accommodated non‐food items in the overseas markets. This had a catalysing effect. Over time, the company began to employ personnel whose sole responsibility was to transfer the hypermarket format learnings back to the UK from central and eastern Europe. These learning agents represented a new dimension in the company's organisational structure, but there were difficulties in this process as management highlighted:
The learning challenge following on from this is how do management then transfer those learnings to the home market and explain to the headquarters that they don't know everything, there is a better way of doing it. A new product, process – that is culturally incredibly difficult to implement. This is extremely difficult to understand and teach the domestic market.
According to the sell‐side analysts, these problems were much more acute in the aggressively industrial approach adopted by Tesco than the looser federal approach which emphasises the role of the international firm as a “vehicle” for investment.
External strategic processes
With regard to what had been learned by Tesco from the external strategic processes, a number of key themes emerged from the in‐depth interviews.
Competitor orientation experience. At the corporate level, the findings suggest that Tesco learned particularly valuable lessons when faced with abrupt competitive shifts, to new circumstances, and responses from other retail multinationals. Specifically, Tesco were faced with hard decisions centring on whether they should participate in the consolidation process (as a consolidator or consolidatee), knowing that the valuations placed on acquisition targets were over‐priced, and there would be a distinct possibility of losing strategic control. One sell‐side analyst summed up the pressure:
In going it alone, Tesco would be making a huge strategic call. If wrong, the business would be seriously disadvantaged and would eventually lose their independence. If right, their vision would be second to none, and management would be regarded as one of the best in the world.
Despite their relatively strong position against UK competition, the consequences of Tesco's relatively weak position against much larger and more experienced international peers were profound:
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acquisitions outside the UK may prove highly dilutive;
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the size of possible acquisitions are effectively reduced;
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a merger with a large European retailer would leave Tesco as the junior partner; and
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Tesco is more vulnerable to an aggressive bid.
Tesco resisted such pressures and decided to pursue international expansion independently through organic store‐by‐store expansion – albeit much more aggressively than had hitherto been the case (i.e. the development of 200 hypermarkets over four years). During what was rapidly emerging as one of the most intense periods of retail merger‐and acquisition‐driven internationalisation, the growing sense of unease among analysts began to surface about the long‐term endurance of Tesco internationally. However, management held their nerve – the speculative scenarios which had been envisaged in the early 2000s (see Wrigley (2002) for example) pointing towards a series of mergers and acquisitions at both the global and local level failed to materialise. Instead, quite remarkably, the immediate years following 2000 saw relatively little consolidation whatsoever. Through a series of competitive adjustments including exploiting the benefits conferred by the scale of their UK operations, it seems that Tesco's strategy paid off – and, importantly, deterred any hostile takeover bids. While the strategic effects of this intense period are difficult to determine analysts suggested that this period of vulnerability for Tesco led to a greater realisation of the strategic necessity of the company's international operations in ensuring the long‐term future of the company.
At the local competitive spatial level, Tesco adjusted operational retailing aspects, sometimes with minor modifications and at other times ensuring fundamental transformation of the format during the internationalisation process. Both buy‐ and sell‐side analysts believed that this international juncture was an area where companies cou