Quote:
Originally Posted by denphone
Hope is one thing , reality is another.
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Well it'd be a whole lot worse if trading was making a loss which it isn't.
Like a lot of huge organisations have in the past, Tesco has been slow to change and react to competition and market trends. To that extent, the discounters have stolen a march on them but, as I've said before, people are going to get fed up with the problems frequently experienced in stores like Lidl/Aldi. Just the other day I was in our local Lidl - it took ages to park in the miniscule car park and when I got inside virtually al the frozen food cabinets were either empty or almost so. In the likes of Tesco, if they've run out of one brand of something, there's always several alternatives to be had - not so in Aldi/Lidl. It's not the first time that's happened either, so whilst people might put up with that sort of thing occasionally and when there's a notable price advantage, I'm finding myself shopping more in Tesco where I can park with no problems, the shelves aren't empty and there's a far wider range of products so I can always get what I need.
From what I've seen of the discount stores around this area, nearly all are located on small sites, with limited parking, miniscule stock rooms and restricted opening hours - which is why the sites are cheaper to develop and operate. They're frequently busy with long queues, short of stock on the shelves and operating at what must be full capacity at times. I don't see much room for further growth in those locations but what I do see is room for growing customer dissatisfaction as the bigger stores fight back and that's what will happen.