We’ve been hearing about global expansion by  chain store retailers and restaurants for years.  Most people probably think that in many parts of the world this is an “imperialistic” initiative by US and European companies.

My blog statistics indicate that there’s global interest in chain store development from local people.

My blog is hosted by WordPress, who tracks the country of origin for all page views.  The chart below shows the number of page views for the past 2 months by continent with further notes on specific countries.

Maybe I’m less aware of global chain store development trends than most, but I was surprised (happily) to see multiple page views from countries such as Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Botswana.  I did a little more research on google maps and found areas where there is clearly more going on than I expected, such as this map showing seven McDonald’s locations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

As you might guess, where you find McDonald’s, you also find Wendy’s, KFC, Nike, adidas, Gap, and many other restaurants and retailers.  But they’re not just US/European-based companies.  The Malaysian Retailer Chains Association founded in 1992 has 200 member companies representing over 6,500 stores!  The vast majority are NOT based in the US/Europe.

Anyone who has done international development or is from one of the countries I’m mentioning is probably laughing at me now, and I deserve it!  However, many readers are probably just as surprised as I am!

Many of these page views come from search engines such as google, Bing, and Yahoo.  WordPress tracks the keywords that caused Chain Store Advisors blog to appear in the results.  For example, yesterday nearly 50% of the page views came from India, Australia, and Botswana.  Here are the search terms that led people to this blog:

integrated logistic support hierarchy

system behavior of a chainstore management information

demographics and store sales forecasting

voice of customer

use of analytics in sales force alignment deloitte retail

retail stores looking into market research for 2012

how to approach chain store

There is a great opportunity to share information with our global colleagues in the chain store industry.  The various members of the chain store “food chain” need each other to find and evaluate deals, whether we are operators, brokers, or analysts.

I hope that some of the readers of this blog outside the US will provide comments about how we might begin a dialogue that benefits all.