Why Grocers Like Tesco Find Trouble in the U.S. Market

Any day now, Tesco Plc, the U.K. grocery giant, may announce the closure of the 200 or so Fresh & Easy food stores it has opened in California, Arizona and Nevada since 2007.

When it does, Tesco will join a long list of international grocers that have met their match in the U.S. In every case, these companies wrongly assumed that strategies honed abroad would succeed in America, and they underestimated the resources and management attention required to make headway in a vast and fast-changing market.