The implication of this change Tesco had to make in order to satisfy customers Demand is that they will lose profits by lowering the prices of 3,000 products. On the other hand, doing that will help them fight back the competition and gain territory against their competitors.
How changing social and working patterns in the consumer market impacted Tesco
For example in some areas, shops and stores stay open till really late in the night. This happens because of the customers in that particular area who shop a lot at later hours in the day or in the night. This is due to the fact that people these people have busy schedule and work all day so the only moment the time to do their shopping is at latter hours.
Since the businesses are always looking for more customers, they are forced to fit in with these customers’ demands to adapt to these working patterns. This is also part of the radical change that the consumer market went through and it forced retailers to offer much more flexible opening and closing times than it did years ago. Nowadays, many retailers leave their businesses (shops) open for much longer period of time during the day, some of them even open on weekends as well as week days.
The implications of this change for Tesco is that it is going to cost them a lot of money to pay staffs to work till at latter hours and pay extra the staffs they already have to do some extra shifts. On the other hand, opening at latter hours will be beneficial for the retailer because not only they will be satisfying customer expectation, but they will also boost their sales and profits by opening till late.
How affluence in the consumer market impacted Tesco
Affluence has also played an important role in the radical change of the consumer market. A precise example of that would be higher consumers cost. Consumers nowadays have to spend more to be able to obtain high quality food or goods. Some consumers are willing to pay high price in order to get the quality. This in turn has impacted the consumer market and because of that, retailers have special area or shelves in their stores dedicated to high quality good, they are mostly named finest range. Tesco or Morrison’s for example have these finest ranges where people with more spending power and who have a taste in good quality food.
Affluence has also increased because in modern days, people have more money to spend on the food of their choice and the food they need e.g. diet food. Based on that, retailers have widened the range of type of food they offer.
In 2012 Tesco has begun talks with suppliers aimed at launching price promotions in less well-off areas where it faces competition from the likes of Aldi and Lidl. “It has a list of 100 stores where it is going to launch special deals at discount prices,” said one Tesco food supplier involved in the talks.
How Cultural and lifestyle expectations in the consumer market impacted Tesco
Lifestyle food changes has also been impacting on the consumer market and has forced retailers like Tesco to stock and sell more of fresh food and dietary food because of the consumers’ demands and expectations. This is because consumers have become very aware of the type of food they consume and many consumers are becoming very concerned of where the fresh food they purchase comes from. Most retail stores have now vast ranges of food all dedicated to fresh and dietary food. In fact most food sold in superstores or any other retail stores will most likely be fresh food. Because of this phenomenon, farmers’ shops have multiplied a lot during the recent years. Some consumers now rather buy their product directly from these farm shops then going to their usual supermarkets. This is what drove most retailers to increase the amount of fresh food and dietary food in their stores to make sure they satisfy the needs of the consumers and to adapt to these changes.
Because of the impact of lifestyle changes, Tesco has been trying to satisfy customers’ lifestyle demands by meeting one of its targets which is was reducing the number of calories sold in its own-brand soft drinks last year by one billion.
Cultural expectation refers to the fact that people from different cultures i.e. (different countries) here in the UK are requesting the types of food from their culture, this is mostly caused by immigration. Also we have people from in the UK visiting other countries and bringing the cultures from these countries back to the UK where it becomes a demand. For example, sushi which has become a very popular food in the UK is actually a cultural food from Japan. Curries are another type of cultural food that has taken the UK by storm and are in high demands as take away food.
Cultural changes is one of the biggest changes to hit the consumers market and to adapt to this change, retailers had to provide cultural food from other countries to make sure that their customers were satisfied. For example, stores like Tesco found themselves selling food from countries around the world and entire ranges dedicated to European food for example. There was also the arrival of Chinese, Indian and others take-away food from many food retailers.
The implication of this change for Tesco is that it will cost them a significant amount of money to provide all their customers with cultural food in order to satisfy their needs and expectations. Om the other hand, since they will be satisfying customer needs, they will easily attract customers which will lead them to increase their sales and profits
How two or much more cars household in the consumer market impacted Tesco?
Having a car enables consumers to move more, the more they you can move with your car the more access you have to various and diverse food. With a car, customers can go wherever they want to obtain the food they fancy no matter how far it is. Also having a car enables the shoppers/consumers to buy more food and products since they have more space in their cars. Retailers also had to adapt to this change and to do so; they had to offer more parking spaces to customers for their cars. Giving more space to customers attracts shoppers since most people now do their shopping with their cars.
Tesco has cut the three-hour free parking restrictions at its Hanley store – to help free up spaces for shoppers. This means motorists can now only park for a maximum of two hours at the city Centre store. It follows complaints from customers that they were struggling to find empty spaces on the 750-space car park
A notice to customer’s states: "To improve car park space availability at the store, customers will be able to park for a maximum of two hours." But this has angered Tesco customers who fear they will not have long enough to shop and other drivers who park at the store to avoid Hanley's parking charges.
The implications of this change for Tesco is that they will have to spend money on building extra car parks in order to provide more parking space for all their customers. This more in return will help the retailer to attract more customers because everyone wants to shop where they will have a place to park their cars because it makes their shopping much easier.
How climate change levies in the consumer market impacted Tesco.
Climate change levies is a sort of tax that retailers have to pay in order to import food to the UK from other countries, because by bringing food here to the UK, planes or boats that are used for the transport of goods emit CO2 in our atmosphere and pollute the air.
Also, the production of most products nowadays contributes to the increase of pollution, from goods packaging to the actual food we consume. So in order to solve this problem, retailers are encouraged to produce without causing too much pollution.
Tesco is clearly committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 50% by 2020. Also, Tesco is minimizing the waste produced in their stores by increasing social conscience in customers. Tesco are helping the environment by reduces carbon footprint and minimizing the waste in their stores. They have been named top UK retailer for tackling climate change, based on its inclusion in the CDP’s FTSE 350 Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index for the fourth year in a row.
The impact of this change on Tesco is that they will have to spend a lot of money to reach their goals of reducing the carbon footprint. This because they will probably have to spend a lot of money to finance the technology necessary to help them work in a green environment till 2020. Doing this for the environment will also help them build a good reputation because a lot of people want to live in a safer environment so they will surely appreciate the efforts of Tesco. Building this good reputation will also help Tesco attract more customers because those people who appreciate the way Tesco is tackling environmental issues will be tempted to start shopping at Tesco even if they didn’t like them before.
How technology in the consumer market impacted Tesco.
With all the radical changes, there were also the inventions of new like technology. Some of these technologies includes bar coding, scanning, loyalty cards. All these new technologies have come to reshape the some aspects of the consumer market. Scanning machines were invented in the 1950s and was introduced to the consumer market, from then it has always been used to facilitate the purchase of almost every product from food to electrical. In the modern days, we have bar scanning machines in big supermarkets where customers can directly scan and buy their products without having to wait in big long queues to check out.
Bar coding was one of the technologies that have been invented for the benefits of the consumer market and the customers. All products or food have a special number code that helps tracking them, facilitate their purchase and provides all the information about the products.
The UK's first transactional barcode scanner for the iPhone has been launched by Tesco, enabling householders to scan any grocery item and add it to a home delivery order instantly. The barcode reader, which has been added to the existing Tesco Groceries app available on the iPhone, is being targeted at busy parents and time-poor professionals who want to be able to add specific items to their online shopping basket at any time rather than browsing for groceries to add to their shopping lists
Tesco's introduced scan-as-you-shop scanners, so you can scan your own shopping and pay at the end. They are quick and easy, and you don't have to keep unloading and reloading you’re shopping. This allowed them to attract more customers because of the new technology and the benefits that it provided. It also allowed Tesco in satisfying their customers which helped them increase the amount of lifetime customer they had.
The implication of this change for Tesco is that they will build a good reputation for having such advanced technology which makes shopping easier and transparent for customers. The fact that they have such technology will also help them in attracting more customer to their stores which will in turn lead to making more sales and increasing their profits. On the other hand, it will cost a lot of money for Tesco to introduce this brand new technology in all of their stores.
How sustainable products in the consumer market impacted Tesco
Sustainable is basically products that are at risks of disappearance or extinction. An example of this is salmon fish. In order to preserve this specific species, fishermen have come up with a way of keeping them alive in a sustainable way which involves creating a pond of fish and feeding the fishes inside the pond till they mature. This was done so that we, the customers never run out salmon.
The fact that Tesco sells sustainable products for the support of things on the risk of extinction is that it will help build a good reputation. Selling sustainable product will help Tesco to attract more customers because of the good reputation they obtained and also because there are people out there who like retailers who support such causes. It will also help the company increase customer loyalty and the amount of lifetime customers.
How customer service in the consumer market impacted Tesco.
As part of the radical change in the consumer market, retailer shops offer more staff and quality services. These are the things that attract more consumers because it means quality services. More and more retailers have imitate this technique to make sure they offer better customer services, some stores even have staff especially to welcome customers and make sure they more feel comfortable walking around.
These staff help make shopping trips easy and enjoyable sometime for consumers because if you go shopping in a market and find it easy to locate every item on your list with clear and easily readable price tags you are more likely to go there every time you need to shop.
Because customers are crucial and so important to retailers, they are the key for business to make profit and benefit. They have a significant influence on retailers and their activities and because of that, retailers like Tesco to better serve these customers to make sure they satisfy them and retain them.
In order to find out they can better their customer service and keep their customers happy, Tesco put in place the “yearly surveys” where Tesco give designed questionnaires to their customers and in exchange they get answers concerning what customers think about their general stores.
The implication of this change for Tesco going to be the cost. The retailer will have to spend a lot of money to employ staffs and pay for their training in order to have a skilled and experienced customer service staff. On the other hand having a good customer service in the store will help satisfy customers and keep customers around for more.
Bibliography
http://www.tescoplc.com/index.asp?pageid=636%20#ref_index.asp?pageid=104
http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/channels/supermarkets/tesco/tesco-pushes-scan-as-you-shop/358021.article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11141300/Shoppers-lose-appetite-for-big-supermarkets.html
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Tesco-cut-free-parking-hour-Hanley-store/story-18460434-detail/story.html#ixzz3Q73gtayM
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a1506271-Tesco-online-delivery-and-customer-service-is-poor
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