I dunno about a 'hypermarket experience.' As I understand it, Wal Mart's the biggest 'hypermarket' and the experience is rather less impressive for the employees.

ALDI's another international competitor - of course, it only really sells products that have been branded as ALDI... not as encouraging for the many businesses that are supermarket suppliers.

Cheaper products, sure, but at what cost to the Australian economy?

It's refreshing to get a story on this that isn't a nationalistic bleat, and puts the consumer first for once.

TurnRightThenLeft, I'm not sure that Coles is exactly a model employer. It's certainly not a model retailer. Genuine competition is exactly what Australian retailing needs.

Rhian - you're right in that coles isn't a model employer.

If you compare them to Wal-Mart however, they're saints. Also interesting in that former Woollies CEO Roger Corbett now sits on the Wal Mart board - apparently he's been following as much of the Wal Mart model as he can for many years, which is probably one of the reasons why Woollies is trouncing Coles...

Do I validate your lack of knowledge about retail by posting this comment?

Well why would Carrefour be a good purchaser for Coles? Coles has lowered its feeder population threshold from a 100,000 to less than 30,000 as it attempts to wipe out IGA supermarkets in small rural towns. Would Carrefour be interested in keeping open these small supermarkets or would they keep them open until the local IGA closed, then close the Coles and force people to travel to a larger centre to shop?
If its overseas experience is anything to go by, Carrefours would only be interested in operating in Australia under the current [unfair] Workchoices regime.
Most Melbourne commuters have experience of a very sad example of French corporate social responsibility when we travel on trains and trams operated by Connex.