Progress Report

Retailer Overview
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Name: Metro AG (Metro Group)

Foundation: 1964
Country of Origin: Germany
Headquarters: Dusseldorf, Germany
Markets served: Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin-America
Brands: Metro Cash & Carry; Media Markt; Saturn; Redcoon; Real
Number of Employees: 250,000 (2014)
Revenues: 63,035 Billions (2014)
Profits: 709 Millions (2014)
Website: http://www.metrogroup.de/en

Topics to be covered in depth

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Overall retailer presentation.

Retailer inventory management
Assortment planning
Inventory turns
Use of technology for managing operations

Methodologies to be used for gathering information

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2.
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Metro Group corporate website

Financial sites (i.e. WSJ, Financial Times, Bloomberg)
Research articles (i.e HBS, Deloitte Reports )
Googling
Speaking to friends who have worked at Metro

Data collection process - current status:

Topic

Source

Current
Information
Gathered

Expected
Information to
Gather

Overall retailer
presentation

Metro Group Annual

report 2013-14

-High level of
strategy

-Current retailer strategy

(stores/online).
-New entering markets.
-Branding and positioning.

Retailer

Metro Group Strategy

-Current

-Detailed comparison with

Level(%)

30-40%

inventory
management

Report

Inventory
Strategy

Assortment
planning

Metro Group Annual

report 2013-14

-Portfolio of
-Long-term strategy for new
products by
products introduction as well as
different
SKUs rationalization
brands/markets

Press releases
Inventory turns

Use of
technology for
managing
operations

Metro Group Annual

report 2013-14

Metro Group Annual

report 2013-14

industry peers to be done

-Financial data
(publicly listed)
through 10 SIC
retailing
segment in 10year period
from 2005-2015

-None. We will run regression

models in order to analyze and
compare industry and company
trends

-Different Types
of Technologies
used
-Modernization
of retailing
-RFID- Pallet
tagging versus
Case tagging

-Near Field Communication

Technology (NFC)
-Challenges of RFID
implementation
-Future Store Initiative

50%

60%

100%

50%

References:
1. Gaur, Vishal; Fisher, Marshall L.; Raman, Ananth. "An Econometric Analysis of Inventory Turnover
Performance in Retail Services" Management Science 51.2 (2005): 181-194
2. Kesavan, Saravanan; Gaur, Vishal; Raman, Ananth. "Do Inventory and Gross Margin Data Improve Sales
Forecasts for U.S. Public Retailers" Management Science 56.9 (2010): 1519-1533
3. Metro Group Financial reports: http://reports.metrogroup.de/2013-2014/annual-report/
4. METRO Group and IBM create smart solution for retail that tailors in-store merchandising messages by
tracking product in real time. ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/solutions/pdfs/ODC03116-USEN01a.pdf
5. Impact of the Radio Frequency IDentification (or RFID) technology in the retail industry.Case study: RFID at
the METRO Group, HBS Case Study 606053
6. Future Store Initiative http://www.future-store.org/internet/site/ts_fsi/node/mgroup_fsi/Lde/index.html
7. Press releases: http://www.metrogroup.de/en/media/press-releases
8. Supermarkets news: http://supermarketnews.com/metro-group
9. Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyNews?symbol=MEOG.DE
10. Deloitte Report: http://www.slideshare.net/fred.zimny/deloiittes-global-powers-of-retailing-2012