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Changes in shopping behaviour in its customers force British market leader Tesco to cut 4,500 jobs in 153 proximity stores that carry the Tesco Metro banner. The size of these stores is somewhere in between that of hypermarkets and that of Express stores.
Straight onto shelf
The main change in the Tesco Metro stores is in the field of logistics: incoming goods will be placed straight onto the shelves, cutting the need for storage in the back – and the trips back and forth that require staff. Moreover, management is simplified and employees will need to be more flexible. The stores suffer from changing shopping behaviour: they were built to accommodate customers’ weekly shopping trips, but nowadays they mostly (70 %) cater for smaller same-day grocery trips, says The Guardian. Earlier, Tesco had already cut almost 10,000 jobs in special services for customers, like the butchery and bakery.
Not only the Metro stores are suffering from the difficult market circumstances in the United Kingdom: in 134 out of 1750 Express proximity stores, Tesco wants to reduce opening hours by opening later and closing earlier. The retailer points to the rising costs, which forces it to run its stores more efficiently and more adapted to the smaller but more frequent shopping trips customers make nowadays.
