Building Products in France: A Strategic Reference, 2007

The primary audience for this report is managers involved with the highest levels of the strategic planning process and consultants who help their clients with this task. The user will not only benefit from the hundreds of hours that went into the methodology and its application, but also from its alternative perspective on strategic planning relating to building products in France. As the editor of this report, I am drawing on a methodology developed at INSEAD, an international business school (www.insead.edu). For any given industry or sector, including building products, the methodology decomposes a country’s strategic potential along four key dimensions: (1) latent demand, (2) micro-accessibility, (3) proxy operating pro-forma financials, and (4) macro-accessibility. A country may have very high latent demand, yet have low accessibility, making it a less attractive market than many smaller potential countries having higher levels of accessibility. With this perspective, this report provides both a micro and a macro strategic profile of building products in France. It does so by compiling published information that directly relates to latent demand and accessibility, either at the micro or macro level. The reader new to France can quickly understand where France fits into a firm’s strategic perspective. In Chapter 2, the report investigates latent demand and micro-accessibility for building products in France. In Chapters 3 and 4, the report covers proxy operating pro-forma financials and macro-accessibility in France. Macro-accessibility is a general evaluation of investment and business conditions in France.