MIGROS

A Swiss chocolate aisle in a branch of Migros in Interlaken. You can just see the M-Budget chocolate on the bottom shelf.

As early as 1935, Duttweiler showed his zest for expansion by founding the Hotelplan travel agency. Later the Migros brand was applied to a weekly magazine, "Wir Brückenbauer" in 1942. Other ventures were restaurants in 1952, gasoline stations (Migrol) in 1954, language schools (Eurocentres) in 1956, a bank (Migros Bank, Banque Migros) in 1957 and an insurance company, 1959. It opened its first foreign supermarket in the frontier region of France, at Thoiry, in 1993, and its first recreation park, Säntispark, at Abtwil in St.-Gallen, in 1986.

Migros today

To this day, Migros keeps the cooperative society as its form of organization. Nowadays, a large part of the Swiss population are members of the Migros cooperative - around 2 million of Switzerland's total population of 7,2 million^{[1] [2]}, thus making Migros a supermarket chain that is owned by its customers.

Reflecting the altruism of its founder, Migros operates a number of evening schools for working adults, featuring classes in cooking, languages and other subjects. It has obligated itself to spend one percent of its annual turnover for financing cultural projects in a broad sense; the sub-organization taking care of this is called Migros Kulturprozent^[3] ("cultural percent"). An example of the Kulturprozent's activity is its own record label Musiques Suisses often featuring little-known works from Swiss music history.

The supermarkets are categorized in the three size classes of M, MM and MMM, similar to Migros Türk in Turkey (sold to a Turkish group in 1975).

Migros acquired some notoriety in 1977 when it fired its severest internal critic, Hans A. Pestalozzi.

M-Budget and Migros Sélection

In 1996, influenced by the budget ranges in other supermarket chains around Europe like Tesco's Value and a business trip to Australia, Migros made their budget range called M-Budget with 70 products aimed at those with low incomes and large families. Now it has grown to 330 products including mountain bikes, snowboards, mp3 players, milk chocolate and jeans.

To promote the range, in the early noughties, Migros developed M-Budget Party with tickets costing CHF 9,90 including free non-alcoholic drinks (cola, lemonade and orange juice) and snacks (crisps, chocolate and cakes).

In 2005, together with Swisscom, Migros lauched M-Budget Mobile, a pay-as-you-go mobile phone company.

In April 2006, Migros announced the M-Budget credit card together with Fédération des coopératives Migros (FCM), MigrosBank and MasterCard, originally with an annual rate of CHF 4,40 - low compared to credit card annual rates of CHF 100 for a MigrosBank MasterCard Argent credit card. The card will be ready by autumn 2006. After Coop, the biggest competitor of Migros, announced a credit card without any annual rate, Migros too will offer its credit card for free. Migros later announced the full details of the credit card, it will have an APR of 9,9%, the ability to gain cumulus points (1 point per 2 francs) and GE Money Bank (Switzerland) is to be one of the partners of the credit card.

In 2005, they introduced a premium line called Migros Sélection.

The Migros Ethic

Migros does not sell alcoholic beverages nor cigarettes, except at LeShop.ch, and does not sell racy magazines.

Companies

Swiss Migros:

• Migros – supermarkets
• LeShop.ch – an online supermarket (cooperation started in 2004 - 80% of shares bought in 2006) [1]
• Migrol – petrol stations
• M-electronics– electronic stores and internet music download service
• OBI – Do it yourself stores
• FitnessPark – fitness centres
• Do it+Garden Migros – Do it yourself stores and garden centres
• Micasa – furniture stores
• MigrosBank – bank (it is the fifth-largest in Switzerland)
• Golfpark – public golf courses
• Ex Libris – bookshops
• Migros Klubschule – adult education centres
• SportXX – sports shops
• Eurocentres – language schools
• Frey – chocolate manufactures
• Migros Magazin – the company's sales magazine
• Hotelplan – holidays company
• Florissimail – postal flower service

Globus Group (became part of Migros in 1997)

• Interio – furniture stores
• Globus – department stores
• Globus Herren – menswear stores
• Office World – office supplies (not the British Office Worlds, owned by Staples)
• Globi – a cartoon character who is mascot of the Globus Group, often refers as Switzerland's Mickey Mouse.

Competitors

The main competitor is Coop, Switzerland's second-largest supermarket chain, a cooperative like Migros, but with a more centralized organization.^[4] Amongst the smaller competitors are Denner Discount, the Manor department store chain, and more recently Carrefour and Aldi. Although Carrefour and Aldi are very large international supermarket groups, they entered the Swiss market only recently (Aldi opened its first Swiss shops in 2005) and thus operate just a few branches at the present time. However, it is expected that especially Aldi will become one of the major competitors of both Migros and Coop, as it managed to set established supermarket chains in other countries under heavy pressure through an aggressive discount strategy. A further expected competitor is Lidl which has announced to establish supermarkets in Switzerland shortly.

References

External links

• Migros Switzerland website, in German, French & Italian
• Migros Sélection website, in German, French & Italian