Providing What Customers Want?

Asda yesterday launched a new range of clothing under it’s well-established George label.

What’s unusual about that, you might ask. 

Well the 13-piece range is “the UK’s first mainstream range of traditional Asian clothing” - not just for supermarket clothing, but for the big high street names.

Recession Bites - new food shopping habits

Tonight’s edition of the Money Programme looks worth watching, or recording – on at 22.00 on BBC2 (unless Wimbledon overruns by two and a half hours again, presumably!).

‘Recession bites into our eating habits’ looks at the changes in supermarket and food spending over the last year, as food prices have risen by 8% and consumers seems to be cutting back on luxuries and shifting to inferior goods – a good illustration of income elasticity of demand, and the effects of falling consumer confidence.

Customer service classic - the upside-down pizza

A classic call into a customer service call centre. The ASDA customer is unhappy that his supermarket has sent a pizza with no toppings.  There’s just one, tiny thing that the customer has forgotten to check…

Sales promotion tactics change at Tesco and Asda

Two news stories provide a couple of excellent examples of sales promotion in action…

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Price war on the way - with chocolate as the winner

Great news for those of us whose Easter is never complete without overdoing the milk chocolate egg consumption....

Revealed - the Secrets of a Retailer’s Christmas Logistics

An absolutely fantastic video has just arrived on the BBC website - ideal material to demonstrate the use of technology in operations, business planning and a host of other curriculum topics.  A huge hat tip to the BBC for producing resources like this - absolutely invaluable.

End of an era for supermarket retailing

This week marks a landmark for the UK grocery retailing market.  Sir Ken Morrison (pictured above opening a new Morrisons store) is retiring as chairman of the business founded by his father after over 55 years in the industry.

Times up for Asda’s 4 year George Trial

How long should it take for a major retailer to decide whether a new format has what is takes to be a winner.  In the case of Asda, it has taken over four years to determine the fate of standalone fashion brand “George”.

An A to Z of UK High Street Retailers

Here’s a little exercise that your students might find interesting.  The challenge is to come up with an A to Z of well-known retailers operating in the UK. The task is much harder when done alone and without research materials (aka wikipedia).  It would make a good timed group exercise. Which group can complete the list first?  Or which group can complete the most letters with legitimate retailers in a specific time (e.g. ten minutes).