Profitero takes a look at some key business strategies and innovation at Groupe Casino in recent years.
Entrepreneur Geoffrey Guichard opened the first Casino store in the town of Veauche on June 25, 1898. As ensuring consistent product quality proved difficult at that time, Casino began producing products such as bread, chocolate and cleaning products. The Casino brand name was created in 1901. By 1919, Casino’s network has extended to 520 stores and 264 franchises. By the time Guichard passed away in 1940, Casino was operating 1,670 stores and 839 franchises.
Groupe Casino now operates around 9,500 stores in France under the banners of Géant Casino (hypermarket), Casino, Franprix, Monoprix, Leader Price, Petit Casino, Spar, Vital, Naturalia, Wassila and Cdiscount.com. The Group also has 2,300 imternational stores, mainly in Latin America (Brazil and Colombia) and Asia-South East (Thailand and Vietnam), which represent 45 per cent of its activity. In 2011, the Casino Group achieved a consolidated turnover of €34.4 billion. It employs 230,000 people around the world.
Here, Profitero takes a look at a selection of the Casino banners and key developments for the group in recent years:
Monoprix
Located in urban centres, the upmarket banner offers food, beauty, clothing and household products to customers; it also includes a number of concept stores, including Monop’ – a neighbourhood convenience store with extended hours – and Beauty Monop’ offering health and beauty products. Visit Monoprix online at http://www.monoprix.fr.
CBD’s Future
Having recently taken control of Brazil’s largest retailer CBD (Grupo Pao de Acucar), the Group says it has no plans to break up the business.
Le Meilleur d’Ici
Casino introduced its ‘Le Meilleur d’Ici’ regional produce range to French stores following the completion of its trial last year. ‘Le Meilleur d’Ici’ was available in 38 outlets by the end of 2011.
Pricing
The Casino Groupe made Leader Price its banner in the area of discount retailing. Stores sell only own-brand products and extends to 3,500 items. The banner plans to open 1,000 additional locations within the next five years. With so many French retailers now using competitor price monitoring for dymanic pricing strategies, pricing intelligence is becoming central to a supermarket’s price campaign.
Innovation in private label
Casino introduced healthy eating ranges ‘Casino Bien Pour Vous’ and ‘Tous les Jours’ to stores in late 2011. “Bien pour vous” replaced the “Ondilège” range while “Eurosourire” made way for “Tous les jours”.
Convenience Stores
The Petit Casino, Spar and Vital banners can be found in towns and villages all over France. There are now over 6,000 conveniences stores in operation.
Jean-Charles Naouri
The chief executive and majority shareholder of Groupe Casino studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (science), Harvard University and ENA (Guernica) and has a PhD in Mathematics. Naouri began his career at the Treasury. He was chief of staff of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Budget from 1984 to 1987 before moving to Rothschild & Co. He became CEO of Casino in 2005.
Halal Stores
In 2011, Groupe Casino announced that it was opening 20 convenience stores dedicated to selling halal food under the Wassila banner. “We planned the installation of these stores in areas which would have a large Muslim population,” said Jean Prevost, director of innovation at Casino. In 2010, Muslim consumers spent over 4.5 million on halal food.
Own-label beauty products
“We offer high-quality personal hygiene products under our own brand,” says Karine Perrier of Casino. She explains that customers looking for the best price “will probably be more attracted to the basic range, while those “seeking a more sophisticated product” will be attracted by the brands C Expert, Ysiance or the range of Bio Care Casino. The Yasiance range is linked to the rituals of hammam or Turkish bath e.g. Rasul hair mask and body scrub with pink clay. The C Expert haircare products were developed with esteemed Parisian hairdresser Eric Roman.
New distribution centre
Casino opened a new 28,000-square-metre distribution centre in Gonesse, close to Paris in the spring. The site serves the fruit and vegetables requirements of Leader Price, Franprix and CDiscount banners in north-east France. The distribution centre uses pick-by-voice technology.
eCommerce
Cdiscount.com receives 800,000 visitors each day and has over one million registered users.
Organic produce
Naturalia, the leading retailer of organic products, joined the Casino Group in late 2008.
© 2012 Profitero – Pricing Intelligence
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About Profitero
Pricing intelligence company Profitero provides retailers with actionable price intelligence data, monitoring over 50 million products across 4,000 eCommerce retailers every day, observing pricing, promotions and stock availability. We work with the world’s leading retailers, enabling them to acquire new customers and grow profit margins by monitoring and responding to changes in competitor pricing and promotional activity as they happen. For more information on Profitero price intelligence and competitor monitoring, visit www.profitero.com or email sales@profitero.com
