RIYADH, 5 August 2007 -- Supermarket group Carrefour has announced to open four new hypermarkets in Saudi Arabia within a year from now, which will feature the widest choice of world-class brands at the most reasonable prices. The announcement to open new stores in four Saudi cities including Jeddah, Taif, Riyadh and Madinah, was made by Abdullah Ahmed Al-Ahmed, Carrefour vice president, here yesterday.
"The new Carrefour units, which will have huge sales area, will cater to the needs of the growing population of Saudi cities," said Al-Ahmed. With the population of about 24 million, the Kingdom is still under-retailed and there are huge opportunities for business houses to open new retail outlets. Carrefour currently has six stores in the Kingdom including three world-class hypermarkets in Riyadh.
Referring to the ambitious expansion plan, he said that the Saudi Carrefour, a joint-venture between Al-Olayan Group and the Majid Al-Futtaim Group, aims to launch more than 20 stores around the Kingdom over the next seven years. Moreover, Carrefour, established in 1963 in Paris, maintains the top position in the Gulf region, while it also maintains its first ranking in European mass retailing.
Asked about the customer base, Abdullah said that: "a single Carrefour store in Saudi Arabia receives 20,000 customers daily, who perform about 5,000 transactions on our sales counters." "About 40 percent of the customers are expatriates, mainly because we have stacked the best products of their own countries, while we always care to cater to the diverse ethnic tastes and food habits of different nationalities," he added.
Abdullah said that the customers can be benefited by round-the-year promotional programs. "Our win-a-trolley promotion, which has become very popular, is currently underway," said the Carrefour executive. He pointed out that a survey conducted recently has also proved the fact that Carrefour customers are utterly satisfied with the level of prices, the quantity and quality of perishable items and above all services.
He said that the opening of new hypermarkets created a large number of jobs for Saudi nationals, who represent some 35 percent of our work force at the moment. "We have also set up in-house training facility, while we also sponsor trainees, who are selected to receive higher training abroad," said Abdullah, while referring to the recent agreements signed by Carrefour with government agencies like Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF) guaranteeing employment for Saudis.
In fact, Carrefour group is one of the world's largest private employers with a total work force of 420,000 employees working in over 30 countries. Thanks to the massive buying power, Carrefour guarantees to cut costs and keep prices low -- no wonder more than 2,000,000,000 people worldwide shop with Carrefour every year. Besides unbeatable value, Carrefour stores have also got unbeatable choice with over 100,000 items always in stock under one roof.
M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan
© Arab News 2007
