The new plan was announced by Philippe Broianigo, who became the new managing director of local subsidiary CenCar Ltd last September. The company has operated Carrefour stores for almost 10 years. It has 24 hypermarket stores and employs over 7,000 staff in Thailand.

"We do not see Thailand today as a risk to our business and we will continue to invest in this country," said Broianigo. "We will look carefully at any opportunities to build our business faster," he said.

Broianigo said the amendment of the Foreign Business Act would make foreign investment conditions in Thailand more "precise". The company has seen no significant impact from the amendment. "We have been missing many opportunities in the past and it is time for us now to ring the bell and wake up," said Broianigo.

He said the company opened its latest Carrefour store in Phuket in December and would open the 25th store in Chon Buri in the first or second quarter of this year, with another store planned for Rama II Road in Bangkok by the end of the year.

He added that four new Carrefour stores are in the pipeline for 2008. They are in the process of getting approval to open from local authorities. Each hypermarket requires an average investment of about Bt500 million including land and construction costs.

"We want to maintain ourselves as a significant player in the hypermarket segment. And the plan for Carrefour in Thailand is to focus only on hypermarkets. We want to stay in the competition and Thailand is still a very challenging market for us," said Broianigo. "Our hypermarket business is based on volume to give economies of scale and better prices to our customers," he added.

Broianigo said the core customers of Carrefour were shoppers from middle to high incomes. He added that the company would reshuffle its product assortment to add more premium and non-food products to the stores.

"Thailand has recovered from the 1997 financial crisis, and consumers are more demanding, beyond just good prices and basic products on shelves. They want better quality products and many choices," he said.

He added that the company had created a pilot project by renovating an existing Carrefour store to develop a new ''future'' store in terms of product assortment, customer flow and non-food merchandise.

Broianigo said that Carrefour would be stronger in its flexibility and adaptability to the local environment. "We would like to be close to Thai consumers and be part of their environment," he said.

He added that only two of the nine people on the company's board of directors were Thais. The company would like to increase the number of Thai board members to more than 50 per cent by the end of this year.

"We have reinforced the Thai management as we want to have more understanding of the Thai market. We don't try to force our retail concept, but we adapt the concept to Thai customers," said Broianigo.

He said Carrefour would like to be the No-1 hypermarket in each area where a store is located.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation