Speaking at the Checkout Conference last week, Tesco Ireland CEO Andrew Yaxley has outlined how the company intends to simplify its business and return to strong growth.
Yaxley stated that Tesco needs to remain “humble” in Ireland in order to once again overtake SuperValu as the country’s biggest grocer by market share.
He explained how the company intends to increase the number of Tesco Express convenience stores and keep the focus on fresh foods.
“It will be fresh food first from now on,” he said, “and only then will we support some of our shops with general merchandise, and only if it is the right-sized shop.”
Yaxley also indicated that the Clubcard reward scheme would be overhauled, saying that it was “used too much as a promotional tool” and that it should instead be used as “more of a thank you for customers”.
As well as that, Tesco has reduced its number of product lines by 15%, and will now seek to run fewer, simpler promotions. Yaxley explained that the volume of promotions had confused shoppers, causing the sales of multipack items to fall 35%; half-price offers were touted as the solution to this problem.
With regard own-brand products, he said that Irish shoppers had “fallen out of love” with Tesco’s private label offerings. The company has introduced an extra 1,000 own-brand product lines in order to reverse this trend.
© 2016 - Checkout Magazine by Brian Dermody
