Tesco currently operates in 13 countries and it is very possible it will expand into further countries. To read about Tesco’s activity in a certain country, please click on that country on the map. After a gradual expansion into Ireland and an unsuccessful expansion into France in the 1990s, Tesco began a rapid expansion in the late 1990s into emerging markets focusing on Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. These areas have relatively undeveloped grocery retail markets but ones that are changing rapidly giving Tesco major opportunities. Tesco has managed to become among the top retailers in many of the countries in which it operates, giving its business a secure basis. Tesco entered the US in autumn 2007, and is trying to break into India.

No other British-based supermarket chain has operations overseas. Asda is owned by US company WalMart. WalMart operates in a number of countries in the Americas, China, Japan, and is planning stores in India, as well as the UK. For more information on WalMart, see the overseas campaigns section of the Tescopoly website, and the AsdaWatch website. Read about WalMart’s competition with Tesco in Eastern Europe in the the Guardian and about its moves into India in the New York Times. Other international discount chains such as Aldi and Lidl also operate in Britain.

The majority of Tesco’s stores are still in the UK – 2,033 out of 3,409 stores as of August 2007. However, in many countries it is far more geared towards large format hypermarkets than in the UK, so that only around a third of Tesco’s floorspace is actually in the UK. Even so, Tesco’s average floorspace has been falling in many countries in the past 2 years or so, as it diversifies into smaller format stores in countries like the Czech Republic, Poland and South Korea. In November 2007 Tesco announced that within a decade, over half of its annual revenue would be generated outside the UK – it is currently around a quarter. For further information about Tesco’s expansion plans, see an article in The Times.