Tesco.com: Defining the online shopping experience for the UK consumer

Abstract

This is the story of how Tesco.com, advised by EHS Brann, came to dominate the UK's online grocery shopping market, with a 65 per cent market share, at a profit, becoming in the process a worldwide phenomenon. It records the areas of challenge (recruitment, conversion, retention, loyalty, reactivation, modelling, distribution, measuring), the ways in which each challenge was met and the results in each area, against target and/or control. Tesco.com has not yet achieved its objective of overtaking Amazon to become the UK's number one online shopping site, but it has no competitor in sight for the number two spot, and claims to be closing the gap on the leader as well as outperforming it on profitability. In Vol. 2, No. 4 (April-June 2001) of Interactive Marketing a Best Practice paper by Peter Sleight took a broad look at the online grocery business through the medium of Tesco.com. This case study (which won the bronze medal at the IDM Business Performance Awards for 2003) looks with a narrower focus at the recent performance of Tesco's phenomenally successful online business.