Sourcing competition across industries: Japanese department stores and global fast fashion

Traditionally, retailing has been regarded as a localized commercial sector composed of small-scale operations (Akehurst and Alexander 1995). Even global retailers such as Walmart and Carrefour need to target local demand and sometimes cooperate with local retailers to launch new stores in overseas markets. The local nature of the market requires retailers to be aware of local consumer culture, and retailers, therefore, cannot ignore the local market (Dawson and Mukoyama 2006).
The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has 5,163 domestic stores, including Sam’s Club in the United States, compared with 5,816 overseas stores in 2015, making about 47% of its stores domestic; net sales in these stores amounted to $346 billion out of the total $482 billion of company sales in 2015, making international sales just 28.2% of the total (Walmart 2015).
The fourth largest retailer, Carrefour, has 5,650 stores in France out of a total of 12,296 stores, making 45.9% of them domestic; these generated €36.3 billion in net sales in 2015, which was 47% of the total net sales of €76.9 billion (Carrefour 2015). Most retailers-even global retailers-rely on domestic sales. [...]