Tesco wants to be in the premier league of internet retail

Growth of 150% in online sales

“I said that in the future, we would not simply
grow by buying more real estate, but instead change the way we engage with our
customers and embrace digital retailing”, said CEO Philip Clarke at a retail
congress in Singapore. This is already evident in the sales of music and films: the
past year physical sales of that segment dropped by a quarter, while digital
orders rose by 150%.

According to Clarke, Tesco has to become more
than a retail company to stay competitive: “We have to become a technology
company too. We all need to be quicker, smarter, more fluid and more
interactive. We need to change the landscape, not just adapt to it.”

Clarke wants to see more ‘glocalisation’:
global innovations with local applications. “The winners of the future will be
those companies which can take ideas from all parts of the planet and apply
them in different ways and to different places.”

Free e-books

In this respect Tesco wants to expand its online
shopping service in Asia, where the company has physical stores in China,
Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea. Clare also announced Tesco currently
handles more than 500,000 digital shopping lists per week.

One of the ways Clare wants to commit his customers to Tesco, is the free internet television service for the
sixteen million holders of a loyalty card. For this the company uses Blinkbox, a
digital platform where consumers can download films and television series that Tesco
bought in 2011. Soon e-books will be added to the products on offer as well.