Is “quantity” truly ever better than “quality”?: TESCO re-vamps its image with “finest” foods.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/07/uk-tesco-finest-idUKBRE9960K620131007

This article struck me as particularly interesting this week, as I had spent at least an hour at the grocery store on Saturday trying to shave pennies and dimes off of my grocery bill. In unstable economic times in the UK a current trend in the UK is to minimize on grocery store expenditure, yet TESCO is spending its resources developing higher end products. Its shocking, however reflects an interesting move on TESCO’s part.

In the last 15 years, TESCO has developed itself as the “world’s third biggest retailer” behind Carrefour and Wal-Mart. This has however taken a toll on TESCO’s image domestically in the UK, where Sainsbury’s and Waitrose attract the more affluent clientele and TESCO is perceived as a less desirable brand. As a consumer when I visit England, I choose to shop at Sainsbury’s as opposed to TESCO, which is interesting because at its most basic level they each offer consumers the same brands and in their own products there is little differentiation in quality. TESCO has realized its economies of scale and offers these similar products for less, however there is a stigma of low value attached to TESCO. Brand image is a strong motivating factor it seems in TESCO’s decision to relaunch its “finest” collection which will be a range of expensive food products. It will be interesting to see if it succeeds in this endeavour.