The Tesco & other non-Morrisons supermarket thread

[Pete]

Single creme eggs now appear in 'look up item' on Sainbury's self checkouts on the first page, top left. After many a visit trying to scan crumpled up foil with no alternative, I can now process my choccy treat without staff intervention. What a Happy Easter.

50201600

[bilky asko]

Assuming for a moment the price point is kept the same (although - is it?) - trying to make budgo products falsely upmarket seems a bit odd to me. I thought the point of the 'value' race to the bottom was that there were would always be x% of people who will go for the cheapest rattiest gristly cat shit mince they can get hold of - and so explicit packaging to that effect was a nice beacon for them. You grab that market while allowing yourself to push your Finest range as an artificially poncy offering to those who wouldn't be seen dead buying Value. If you make the cheap product more approachable, I can't see it bringing in new custom - will it not just give permission for people to downmarket their shop because the packaging is inoffensive?

The people who buy value products don't want packaging to look like some sort of industrial waste warning label, and when they realise everywhere but Tesco has nice packaging, Tesco's Value range will inevitably decline in popularity.

But it can only decline in popularity in favour of people buying more upmarket (where I assume the margins are higher) or changing supermarket over packaging - and is there anything to suggest this is happening?

It's more of a brand image thing than a direct effect - if people see Tesco's Value range as inferior, then that would reflect in some way on the whole chain. It's keeping up with the Joneses.

[scottishtv]

50201600

Um, yeah. Shoulda just learnt that.

[m-in-m]

50201600

Um, yeah. Shoulda just learnt that.

Can you get help for that. CE Anonymous.

[all new Phil]

Been in the news today that Tesco are about to embark upon some big investment in their stores following their disappointing sales figures. More staff on the floor, investing in the look of the stores, more of a focus on fresh food... wonder where they got that last idea from?

It's definitely about time. My local big Tesco, despite only being revamped about 2 years back, looks appalling on the inside. The aisle ends are bright yellow frames with bright red POS - they look awful and cheap. There's far too much 'home-made' POS that looks shite. The whole feel of their stores needs a massive overhaul I think so I hope, for their sake, that they are radical with what they intend to do.

The fundamental issue I have with Tesco, however, is that they try to do everything, but do it poorly. What they do is the dictionary definition of mass market, piling any old tat up high to sell cheap, but there's less and less demand for this, and they seem to be the only supermarket thus far that hasn't cottoned on to this. Certainly for their big stores anyway - the newer small stores I've seen recently have been a lot better.

[SirKen]

A lot of talk about the big plans for Tesco, I visited one of their concept stores in london and also reviewed their wider plans... Will it work? Remains to be seen..

http://www.ukretailers.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... gs-to.html

[rdobbie]

A lot of talk about the big plans for Tesco, I visited one of their concept stores in london and also reviewed their wider plans... Will it work? Remains to be seen..

http://www.ukretailers.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... gs-to.html

Having flicked through all of Phil Clarke's Powerpoint presentation, as featured in your blog, I note there's very little on the subject of customer service. For me, this has been Tesco's biggest failure of the last 10 or so years.

My two nearest stores have their customer service desks manned by women who I can only describe as bitter and twisted old dragons. They approach every complaint with a defensive "customer is always wrong" attitude and will argue to the death with customers in those ambiguous 50/50 situations, even when the amount of money involved is trifling. One of these women is actually the talk of the town where I live. She's been a permanent fixture on the CS desk since the store opened about 10 years ago and is known locally by a less than flattering nickname, in regard of her aggressive and unhelpful demeanour.

I'm no pushover when it comes to bad service, but there have been occasions in Tesco when I've noticed on my receipt that I've been overcharged and have gone home without challenging it as I've just not had the energy to do battle with the bitch.

And I'm not sure if it's "official" policy or just a bad practice that's evolved over time, but there's a disturbing routine where a customer returns a product and complains of food poisoning, contamination or foreign objects present, for the CS desk staff to dump the offending product in the bin behind the desk, give a refund and take no further action (as opposed to actually investigating what's gone wrong or referring the matter back to the supplier/manufacturer). This smacks of a company that simply doesn't care.

It seems the store managers aren't involved in the customer service process any more. I've known them to refuse to come out of their office when a customer wants to escalate a complaint beyond CS desk level (even when there was a complaint in my store about staff selling alcohol to a customer's 14 year old daughter). When managers do communicate with customers it's clear that they haven't had any training in customer service and don't regard direct customer liaison to be part of their role.

It never ceases to amaze me that a company should spend mega money on marketing, advertising, store layouts, packaging, product ranges, and so on, but should fail so badly on what should be a basic element of retail: the interface between customer and company when things inevitably go wrong from time to time. We all know the old mantra: it's not the mistake that upsets the customer, it's the way the mistake is dealt with.

[rdobbie]

Oh, and I thought this was worthy of note: Tesco have copied Fairy Liquid's idea by bringing out a washing up liquid with retro packaging:



That's the 1980s Tesco logo, but I'm pretty sure it never actually appeared with stripes sitting on top of it like that. And the rest of the design looks post-WW2 era, so it wouldn't have had that logo anyway.

A poor effort. They should have used this logo and done the rest of the design in a similar style:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47381765@N ... otostream/

(By the way, check out the other vintage carrier bags on that guy's photostream, there are some absolute gems on there).

[WillPS]

I can't really see those stripes - but if they're similar to those on classic Value packaging they definitely went with the older logo.

[james2001]

A poor effort. They should have used this logo and done the rest of the design in a similar style:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47381765@N ... otostream/

I've got a shit load of bags in that style, that I rescued out my grandparents garage circa 1998! I still like to visit the Tescos in Worksop because it's still got that style signage all over it. Bizarrely, some of the "typewriter font" signs there actually post-date the mid-90s, and there's been some refurbishment in the past 10 years, which makes me wonder if Tesco keep some stores in old styles on purpouse.

And following that flickr link, the look of the store in Sevenoaks is bizarre! The interior looks just like the one in Mansfield town centre used to look until around 1996. The one in Worksop's different as the aisle signs are grey backround with white text.

[wells]

My big question regarding Tesco in Sevenoaks is whether the lady in green waving is actually waving at a friend or is waving at the Street View camera.

http://g.co/maps/896av

It's something I've never stumbled across on Street View before, except for perhaps on those websites that link you to Street View bloopers.

Minor news, a piece of wallpaper in The Apprentice house looks a lot like the Everyday Value branding.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01gxqjs/?t=4m45s

There also appears to be a strong Blockbusters influence in that house.