Consumer Behaviour Case Study

Tesco's Online Sales Strategy

OR

Abstract:
Tesco was the leading retailer in the United Kingdom. It was also the fourth largest international supermarket chain. Tesco, which had started with retailing food, had subsequently diversified into non-food segments like clothes, consumer electronics, consumer financial services, selling and renting DVDs, CDs, music downloads, Internet service and telecom. Tesco's brand image was associated with good quality and trustworthy goods. In the late nineties, as the economy stagnated and competition intensified in the UK retail industry, Tesco realised the need to look for new avenues of growth. The company decided to enter the hitherto unexplored area of on-line retailing in 1996. The case discusses Tesco's on-line sales strategy, in which, along with the other direct sales channels, on-line selling was used as a significant sales channel. The case discusses the various stages in development and progress of Tesco's on-line channel.

Pedagogical Objectives:

Keywords : Tesco the UK's largest retailer, Tesco food and non-food retailing, Tesco store formats - Extra, Supermarkets, Metro Express and One Stop stores, UK retail industry, Competitors - ASDA, Sainsbury's, Intensifying of the competition in UK market, Tesco looking for new growth avenues, Tesco-pioneering on-line retailing, Tesco.com, Profitable business model of Tesco.com, Tesco - 66% market share of the UK's on-line shopping market by 2006, Tesco - achieving 1 billion in on-line revenues