Ugh!!'s Greymatter Honeypot » tesco

Microsoft tries the “Tesco strategy”

Owen — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:35:05 +0000

It seems like everyone and his dog has some sort of loyalty scheme nowadays. You can collect points when you shop in your local supermarket, when you take a trip in a plane and now, even when you Microsoft‘s Live Search. It’s a scheme called SearchPerks and is designed to allow web surfers to collect tickets (“points”) that they can redeem for various prizes. This technique worked for Tesco, so why shouldn’t it work for Microsoft?

Well, the bottom line is that Microsoft’s search engines consistently returns worse results than Google. Don’t believe me? Try it for a few days. You’ll find yourself switching back to Google when you REALLY need to find something. The problem that Microsoft faces is not one of getting people to try their product, the problem is that their search technology is inferior to Google, and at the end of the day, that’s all punters care around. You may attract a small segment of bargain hunters with this strategy, but as soon as you remove the incentive, you will lose them to other schemes like Homepage Friends, who pay hard cash if you search through them (using Yahoo! incidentally)

What do others think? Well, nobody really seems really convinced, with some parties actually finding the attempt hilarious. Begging people to use your products is no way to increase their confidence and it’s practically impossible to “earn” anything of value.

Once again, the search engine war is all about relevance, and until Microsoft get that into their head, they’re just going to keep pumping money into it for nothing. What a waste!

“Tesco fixed my car”

Owen — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 12:36:55 +0000

If you look at the newspaper today, you’ll see that Tesco is offering to pay for? any damage the contaminated fuel it may have sold from it’s pumps may have caused. They are doing this, even though the source of the contamination has nothing to do with them, they just happened to be the point at which the consumer received it.

So, why are they doing this? Well, at the end of the day it’s all about comsumer confidence. Even if this exercise proves to be extremely expensive, it’s still a drop in the ocean compared to what their daily revenue from fuel sales it. And the last thing they want to do is alienate their customers. So their strategy is to pull out all the stops and make sure their consumers are happy. And I’m sure it works, instead of people talking about how “Tesco ruined my car”, they not talk about how “Tesco fixed my car”

If only Tesco would move into the airline business .. it would be nice to see someone operate to the benefits of their customers!

Sensationalism gets to me

Owen — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 08:58:13 +0000

I just hate people who warp and twist facts in the interest of putting a story together. I suppose I’m a bit of a pedant sometimes; if someone says “Ah .. it was three quarters full”, I’m pretty quick in pointing out “Well actually, it’s only 60% full, which is really closer to half”. I wonder why some people hate me …

Anyway, this morning I spotted a news article titled “Tesco takes on Microsoft in battle for software market“, and thought to myself “Wow! Is Tesco backing Open Source? Do they have something up their sleeve? Maybe a Tesco branded flavour of Linux?”. Shaking in trepidation, I clicked on the link to have a read …

The first line read “Tesco, the UK’s biggest retailer, will go head-to-head with Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, by entering the £8.5bn computer software market.” Amazing! An audacious plan! Will Tesco displace Microsoft in the software market. The next paragraph read “The retailer will launch Tesco-branded software in 100 stores this month. An initial range of six products, which will include office software and security suites, will sell for less than £20 each, massively undercutting rivals’ prices. Microsoft Office sells for up to £300.”

What exactly does that sound like to you? Well .. it sounds like Tesco was launching a Microsoft Office killer which presumably consists of, maybe a word processor or a spreadsheet at £20 each which rivaled Word and Excel in terms of functionality, right?

The rest of the article is pretty depressing as the truth finally hits home. Turns out that what Tesco is really selling consists of some finance, CD burning and photo editing products. This begs the question: how does this compare to Microsoft’s target market? How is this going to steal market share from Microsoft? WHY DID THE REPORTER FEEL HE HAD TO MENTION THAT MICROSOFT OFFICE COSTS UP TO £300???

Thoughts?

Issue with IE 7

Owen — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 08:43:20 +0000

One problem with running Beta software is that other people don’t seem to know about it. Tried checking my Tesco Accounts this morning, and they told me I should switch to a recent version of my browser and recommended I upgrade to IE 6.0

Tesco love

Owen — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 11:23:25 +0000

I was reading the FT this morning on my flight to the Isle of Man and there was some sort of comment on Tesco on practically every page. Seems that following a brilliant Christmas, they now rule an estimated 29% of the grocery market. There was even a cartoon with the 3 Wise Men crossing the desert with the caption: “Seems like we all bought our gifts from Tesco”. They seem to be doing all the right things, including curbing inverstor expectations that their meteoric rise is not sustainable in the long run, but will have to plateau at some point. But for now, as this article states: “If Carlsberg made supermarkets they would probably look like Tesco”

Living in a Tesco world ..

Owen — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 00:42:42 +0000

The agility with which Tesco penetrates new markets is astounding! Just today I popped out to get some ink for my printer and I found Tesco branded cartridges clones which were 25% cheaper than the official HP ones. I bought one, paid for it with my Tesco platinum card, and drove home in my car (which is insured by Tesco insurance).

Oh .. and by the way, this week I switched to Tesco Broadband, which offers an identical service to the BT Openworld account I had till now, at 66% of the price. Besides all these various offerings, Tesco also offer travel insurance, gas and eletricity, and now even MP3 downloads (ala iTunes)

While writing this blog entry, I came across this corporate profile of Tesco which is a couple of years old, but interesting nonetheless. You may not know this, but their stated core purpose is: “To create value for our
customers, to earn their lifetime loyalty”. A more comprehensive profile (just a couple of months old) can be found here. Tesco currently occupy a massive 28% of the grocery retail market, around 12% more than their nearest market rival, Asda. I don’t envy the other players in that market, it can’t be fun to live in Tesco’s shadow!