Dave Lewis, Tesco's new CEO,starts on Monday and amongst the many questions he needs to consider, one will be "What to do with Clubcard and dunnhumby ? " Clubcard launched in 1995 was a key factor in Tesco's rapid growth through the late 1990's and 2000's. It immediately added lfl sales growth of around 4%-5%, attracted £100's of millions of incremental marketing support from major brands and enabled Tesco to improve site location planning, store ranging, pricing and promotions effectiveness.   Their long term partnership and subsequent acquisition of dunnhumby, who provide analytics and marketing service support to Tesco, but also their suppliers and other retailers around the world, has created an asset worth £1.5bn Nevertheless Clubcard is highly expensive. The key cost is the points. Tesco give away c.1% of sales -  c25% of total company profits. In addition there the 100's of million of bits of paper that have to be printed, posted, co...

Austin Lally recently left P&G after more than 25 years to take up a new position as Group CEO of Verisure Holdings / Securitas Direct AB.  Prior to leaving P&G, he was President of Braun and Appliances and a member of the Global Leadership Council.   He started his career in the UK and also had assignments in France, Greater China, Germany, Switzerland and the US.  When he  left he sent a letter to his P&G colleagues that tells us a lot about Austin’s character, achievements and many passions including family, work, music, travel, literature & sport.  Austin's letter to P&G colleagues announcing his retirement  Dear Friends, Today, we are announcing my retirement from the Procter & Gamble Company.  I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for all of your help and support through the years we worked together. Looking back, it has been a tremendous experience.  More than 25 fulfilling years. It began in ...

According to Retail Week, Pets at Home has reported like-for-like growth of 4.1% in its first quarter after building on momentum created by its VIP Club loyalty programme. Total revenues grew by 10.4% during the 16 weeks to July 17 to £210.8m with growth driven by new store openings and improving revenues across its food, accessories and services offers. Nick Wood, chief executive officer, said: “Our differentiated offering in the pet retail market, an increasingly seamless approach to omni-channel, and growing customer participation and engagement in our VIP loyalty programme continues to drive strong returns.” Membership of its VIP Club loyalty programme grew by 400,000 for the 16 weeks to July 17 to take membership to 2.4m members. The card is now used during transactions involving 57% of store revenues, up from 52% during the final quarter of its last financial year. SG-retail were part of the team that helped to design the loyalty programme.  Services rev...

Guest article from E-consultancy :  Tesco is the clear winner in the online grocery market taking 50p of every grocery pound spent shopping on the internet.  This high share is set to continue not just because of spending on fulfilment, dark stores, distribution, stock and offline marketing but due to its online visibility through organic search and a very visible well-structured website.  The online grocery sector is worth £5.6bn   (compared with the whole of the grocery market being worth £157bn).  .   Online grocery shopping set to rise The Guardian  recently reported that as much as 15% of UK grocery sales , worth £900m, were online in the four days from 20-23 December, which shows there is a definite appetite for growth. Together with strong festive purchases, online grocery sales grew 19% last year and are predicted to more than double over the next five years to £13bn (see table below). The big shop is more common online...

Here's an interesting post from IBM on the Internet of Things.... We live in a connected world, a world with  up to a trillion connected devices  in the coming decade. Thanks to IPv6, which enables us to  address every grain of sand in the world , this is likely to increase even more. These connected devices will change our world drastically, and they will generate massive amounts of data. It is projected that  by 2020, sensor data will create approximately 16-20 zettabytes of data annually . That data can drive a lot of value. In fact,  according to Cisco , it is going to be a $19 trillion market within the coming years. The Internet of Things is rapidly taking shape, and we better be ready for the consequences. There are many applications within the Internet of Things. What do you think of a smart city, where even garbage generates data? The South Korean city  Songdo  has been built from the ground up and is completely connected. Songdo, lo...