Doing business on the web- Growing the customer base

Doing business on the web  

The growth of internet sales has also led to the growth of new companies who are collecting information from  consumers to spot trend in the retail market.We have seen that most of the increases in retail sales is through internet sales.
In the 12 weeks to 22 January 2012, Tesco's share dropped to 29.9%,
Morrison s' share slipped from 12.4% to 12.3%
Meanwhile, low-cost chains also saw their share of the market grow, with Aldi up from 3.1% to 3.5% and Lidl up from 2.4% to 2.5%.

Internet sales have tripled in the last 6 years whereas the high street shops are being hit by large tax increases and slower sales. As more people are shopping using their laptop,tablets and mobile phones online sales have hit a boom. Traditional high street stores have closed in record numbers over the last year. In 2012, 52 chains comprising almost 4,000 individual shops collapsed, the highest number since 2008. More closures are predicted in 2013. According to the Royal Mail’s poll, 64 per cent of small and medium-sized online retailers expect sales to continue to improve in 2013, despite a competitive consumer environment.

Benefits of online grocery 

one of the biggest benefits of online shopping is that one does not have to go to the supermarket to buy their food. Instead, they can order food online and have it delivered to their door. This is especially useful for people who work long hours and is Independence for: the elderly, the housebound, those laid up with the flu, times of transportation troubles and who are therefore too busy to go shopping. Also it is time efficient and you will be saving petrol, making it environmentally friendly. Another benefit of buying food from an online store is that families, couples and individuals can save money on their weekly food bill. This is due to the fact that online stores often give their customers discounts for shopping online. Also, since people are not wandering down aisles stocked with appetizing food products, they will not buy anything on impulse, therefore saving money. Finally it is much easier to find specific foods on the internet. Instead of running up and down aisles looking for specific items, customers can now type whatever they are looking for in the search option on the website.

Drawbacks of online grocery shopping

Online grocery stores tend to charge very high rates for shipping small items. When a person only purchases one or two products, it is not worthwhile to pay up to 10 pounds for shipping.
These shipping costs are discounted for people who buy a lot of groceries at once.
Large families, as well as people who like to stock up on food will benefit from this.
Online stores encourage people to be at home during delivery, as they will simply leave the food on the doorstep if nobody is at home.This leaves the food at risk of being stolen, eaten by animals or even getting melted in the sun. Another drawback of purchasing food online is that if an item on a grocery list is sold out, the store will make a substitution for the product.Those who want very specific products should go in to the store and purchase them.



Tesco's sell a variety of products including groceries to electronics and is the biggest supermarket in the UK with 6234 stores worldwide and 72 billion group sales. Their website is broken down into sub categories  ( Food, phones), the colour scheme is blue and white in the traditional Tesco colours.  

The website is targeted at pensioners and 40-50 year old. Pensioners may not physically be able to go shopping so therefore they can have easy access to a computer and do online shopping. Usually 40-50 years are in full time employment and have families,so it would be convenient to shop online. 

Strengths 

• The website is very is to access via search engines like bing and google, all you have to do is type in Tesco's and it will be on the top of the page. 
• Also it is simply to use with it being sub categorized Food, entertainment. This allows a user to go directly to a specific product which overall saves time and effort.

Weaknesses 

• There are no options to change languages for people that who are not able to read fluently in English, so they won't be able to access Tesco's online shopping. 
• When you click on a a category it sends you are redirected to a different place, this may confuse customers and make them think that they are not on the Tesco website.