> I'm almost certainly not going to see the same grocery store chains
That's not really true. It's fair to say that a lot of supermarket chains have operations only in a single country, but there are quite a few multi-country brands as well which aren't uncommon.
A few examples: Carrefour, Auchen, Lidl, Audi, Tesco, (Euro/Inter)Spar, Iceland, Rewe - and that doesn't include subsidiaries of the same company (e.g. ICA/Rimi).
> It's fair to say that a lot of supermarket chains have operations only in a single country, but there are quite a few multi-country brands as well which aren't uncommon.
Actually it's fair to say most of the business is done by local chains, and Europe-wide operations are rather uncommon.
From your mentions, I'd only consider to be "Europe-wide" Carrefour and Spar. Carrefour is everywhere (though their market strategy changes a lot from country to country) and Spar's operations are kinda spotty but also kinda everywhere.
Auchan is everywhere, but in heavy decline because they're basically the Walmart (supercenter) of Europe and people don't like to drive to a hypermarket that much anymore. Almost their only profitable branch at the moment is their Chinese one.
Lidl and Aldi's presence is very spotty outside of Germany. Many countries copied their hard discount model so they have to fight with local companies that have a cultural edge (Lidl and Aldi tend to have tons of German products no matter the host country).
Tesco is a leader in the UK, then kinda common in Central-Eastern Europe, but then almost universally unknown in Germany-Austria-Italy and westward. There are more Tesco in Thailand than in the whole of Continental Europe, to put it in perspective.
Rewe is just in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe (under different names and with wildly different marketing).
Iceland I never heard about, but it's overwhelmingly a UK operation from a quick search.
From your mentions I'd take the wild guess that you live (or have lived) a significant amount of time in the UK ;)
Carrefour and Auchan don't exist in my country, but Lidl is one of the biggest supermarkets (#4, ahead of well established local brands) even though they only entered the market a couple of years ago. The #2 and #3 supermarkets are owned by Scandinavian supermarkets but rebranded - basically just a different name, same colours and style. The #1 is HQed here, but has a majority share of the market in neighbouring countries.
Tesco is big outside the UK and Ireland in a few Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary. I think they were the first hypermarkets in these countries. I've lived in Italy and Spain, and my local supermarkets there were Carrefour and Auchan.
So yes it varies... But my point was that if you actually look it's fairly easy to find a supermarket brand that's HQed in another country.
Maybe more common (where I am) in Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe, as these markets are younger, so it made sense for foreign brands to come when everything opened than establishing everything from scratch.
Of course it's not so integrated as the US - you explained this yourself, brands and marketing are tailored for the local market - but it's not so uncommon as OP suggested.
To reinforce your point, from a Swedish perspective. I've never seen or heard of Carrefour before. We used to have Spar[1] but those got replaced by other chains.
Lidl started showing up maybe 15 years ago and is everywhere by now. I don't think any town/city with more than 20k people is missing a Lidl.
Tesco I've only seen in the UK.
[1]: Spara means "to save" in Swedish, so I've always thought that Spar was from here. TIL it's not.
That's not really true. It's fair to say that a lot of supermarket chains have operations only in a single country, but there are quite a few multi-country brands as well which aren't uncommon.
A few examples: Carrefour, Auchen, Lidl, Audi, Tesco, (Euro/Inter)Spar, Iceland, Rewe - and that doesn't include subsidiaries of the same company (e.g. ICA/Rimi).