Most of the drinks were offered in tins, only a few in bottles. It was very noticeable, that almost every drink or brand tried to expand their items through segmentation (Diet, Light, Classic, different flavors), so that they can reach a big range of consumers. This is a very important point we couldn't recognize at the chocolate bar area. There the brands tried to cover the individuality only with different flavors and kind of bars. Perhaps you can see that on the list of soft drinks also the name TESCO is very dominating. TESCO offers a cheap substitute for the well-established, but also expensive drinks, which seems to be a great opportunity for getting the same product for a better price (e.g. Tesco Cola and Coca Cola). All in all you can say that in both sections (chocolate bars and soft drinks) the variety of types gives the consumer the possibility to get the right drink.
In TESCO there exists also a special store layout, which is carefully thought out. Every product is placed at a specific place on purpose. TESCO tries to make the costumers buy a lot of products as well as the sales promotion and the merchandising.
For examples, fruit and veg are place first. A reason for this is the impression of freshness the fruit and veg is representing. The people are attracted to the product and this gets costumers into the shop.
While waiting at the check-out point they place small products, such as sweets, lighters or chewing gum. These smaller products are at the exit, because there people have to wait spending their time looking around. It is easy to pick these handy products up while standing there, so TESCO could make more money out of this area, called the “golden zone”.
Here is the order of isles and kind of products, how they are placed:
Fruit and veg, health and beauty, dog food, kitchen ware, games, desserts, canned fruit, CD’s, frozen food, sweet, frozen food and drinks. At the side of the shop you can find the meat, bread and fish counter.
After this we looked at the consumer profile. We tried to describe the age, gender and family situation of a specific amount of people chosen at random. We concentrated us on special isles: The sweet and chocolate isle, the frozen food section and bread.
In the chocolate section we could observe that almost every kind of person was buying items and products, but most of the consumers were women and older men. I think the reason for this are children the women could possibly have, because children are the biggest consumers of chocolate and sweets.
In the frozen food area we could make an interesting observation. Most of the people that bought frozen food were old people. This could be explained through the ease in preparing these meals. Many old people find it hard to cook and to stand a long time in the kitchen to prepare their meals. So they take the possibility of frozen food, which only has to be heated.
In the last area, the bread isle, only women put products in their shopping trolley. Probably many women have to take over the important part of doing the daily buying. Bread is one of the products that is needed daily.
You could say that special groups of people dominate each isle, but I wouldn't say that you can reduce an area on this specific group.
I went to TESCO in the late afternoon-it was pretty busy as consumers drop in on the way home from work and most children finish school for the day at this time. You could describe this as TESCO's busiest time of the day, the rush hour.
Merchandising was the next area we tried to analyze.
Advertisement is a big component of TESCO. Everywhere you look there are hanging adverts, placates and signs. The range of advertisement goes from small stickers over catalogues to the big signs, in which this is the biggest share of advertisement. Most of the posters hang from the ceiling in every isle. There they are very easy to notice-likewise because of their size, specific colors and writing.
Every advertisement is placed at special points depending on the kind of product the advert is showing (e.g. Coca Cola in the drinks section).
A lot of the adverts that were presenting a specific product were placed in the right isle directly above the item they are showing (e.g. Bio-vital bread advertisement in the bread isle above the product). Hardly any of them had prices on them.
Eventually all the advertisements try to manipulate the consumer’s thinking, nevertheless they don’t overwhelm or irritate you. I think they are put in the right place and have got the influence, the brands want to produce.
Sales Promotion is connected with merchandising. It also wants to manipulate the thinking of the consumer and pursues the same goals and ideas; likewise the presenting is the same. The only difference is that sales promotion doesn’t advertise a brand directly.
There are a lot of special offers at TESCO. Almost in every isle you can see a “buy one get one free” sign. Most of them are placed at the side of each zone or isle. They catch the consumer’s eye. The B.o.g.o.f.-signs get the consumers to buy products they don’t need to have.
Another promotion trick is the Tesco Club Card, which is a loyalty scheme that locks costumers into their business.
So you can see that TESCO tries to make people buy a product, which they wouldn’t need normally. But again-they don’t overwhelm the costumers.
The last point we observed was staff. The staff at TESCO is very young and most posts are filled with women. The employees seem to be very well trained as no one of them is wondering around not knowing what to do. Every person that is on the staff of TESCO is very busy. Some of them are putting prices on the products and items, some are checking several things, stacking shelves, working at the till and at the fish and cheese counter and some are helping customers to find products. They look like they know what they are doing.
To test the customer service and the knowledge about the products, we asked random staff several things about products, where to find them, about quality and about shop-opening hours. For examples we tried to find out the difference between a few products that seem to be the same.
We pretended to be allergic against nuts. So we asked one person of the staff, which one of the chocolate bars she could recommend us (no nuts in the chocolate bar).
After each question, we received excellent consultations and advices.
The staff could answer everything and was still friendly after a several number of questions.
So we came to the result that there is perfect customer service in TESCO and the staff is well chosen. They all try to support the business through their committed work and attitude.
All in all TESCO is well organized and a good place to go, if you want to buy food or products they offer there.