Tesco

Company Background
Tesco is a leading retailer in the UK, and one of the largest food retailers in the world. It also sells non-food products such as electrical products and clothing. Tesco is headquartered in Hertfordshire, the UK and employs about 318,300 people. (www.datamonitor.com)
The group recorded revenues of £42,641 million during the fiscal year ended February 2007, an raise of 8.1% over 2006. The working profit of the group was £2,648 million during financial year 2007, an raise of 16.1% over 2006. (www.tescocorporate.com)
The net profit was £1,892 million in fiscal year 2007, an raise of 20.5% over 2006. (Spulber, 2007)
The company began life as a grocer, but subsequently expanded into a very wide range of retail, which it has supplemented with an equally wide range of services. These include financial and insurance, telecom, travel agency, and assorted other products including legal advice in the form of do-it-yourself wills and divorce kits. It also runs an extremely influential petrol retailing business. Tesco is predominantly present in supermarkets and hypermarkets, but the company diversified greatly over the review period. Its operations include convenience and petrol retailing via its Tesco Express fascia, small high street outlets via Tesco Metro, supercentres via Tesco Extra and non-food specialists via Tesco Homeplus.
Financial services are existing through Tesco Personal Finance, and its online delivery channel Tesco.com has 98% coverage of the UK and is the country’s top internet delivery service. (Thomas, 2007)
Its recent overall strategy has been straightforward – expansion by all available means in order to create the greatest possible economies of scale to severely threaten its competitors. This means selling a massive range of products, stratifying its offer so that wealthy and poor consumers can shop there and above all, opening as many outlets as possible. Famously, the small market town of Bicester in Oxfordshire was left with...