[Student]
[Professor]
Abstract
Two major retailers who have taken the UK market by storm in recent years are Tesco and Sainsbury’s. While they are highly competitive against each other, they have taken charge of the market shares and have largely eliminated other major competitors in their niche. As such, this paper investigates which of the two, now national, brands by comparing primary market research in the areas of customer service, pricing, and an overall brand image, and determining who had the better scores overall. The research involved direct interviews and surveys from the primary customer base. The research indicates that in terms of supermarket market shares, and customer satisfaction, Tesco is the more prominent brand in the U.K, as demonstrated in its performance in multiple survey areas.
Introduction
Business management plays a vital role in the success or failure of a company as it is the business management that decides about the marketing, branding, and placing of the brand in the mind of its target customers (Thomas and Chrystal, 2013). There are various retail brands in market that offer a wide variety of grocery items as well as other relevant retail products such as apparel, shoes, electronics, crockery, machines, and stationary. Two famous of the retail brands that have swept the major chunk of the market share in the United Kingdom include Tesco and Sainsbury’s. The two brands are highly competitive against each other by providing low prices, wide variety of the products, promotions and discounts, and good quality. The paper investigates about the better brand out of the two by including the results of primary market research that indicates that Tesco is a better brand than Sainsbury on the basis of customer services, low prices, and an overall better brand image. The research involved the direct interview surveys from the customers and their response was analyzed by statistical tools as well as bar charts to clearly depict the better option.
Data Population
20 adult persons were interviewed through questionnaires in order to point out the better supermarket brand on the basis of customer services, prices, brand image, and quality of the goods. The results are based on the response of the population in the context of business management.
Results
The question regarding the better brand out of these two supermarkets revealed that a majority of people consider Tesco as a better brand than Sainsbury’s, as 12 out of 20 responded in the favor of Tesco, whereas 8 thought that Sainsbury’s is an overall better brand than Tesco. This depicts that Tesco enjoys the leading position in the minds of its customers despite a strong competition with Sainsbury’s.
Tesco is preferred by a majority of people due to its better business management than Sainsbury, including the experience of online shopping.
The next question was asked about the factor that the customers perceived as the major success factor in bringing success to Tesco as compared to Sainsbury. People were given four options including prices of the products, quality of the products, organizational image, and customer services. The following chart depicts the response of people to the question;
The chart reflects that a majority of customers who are regular shoppers of both the supermarkets prefer Tesco more due to its low prices and perceived organizational image as compared to Sainsbury’s.
The next question asked the clients about their perception on the contribution of manager of the supermarket, CEO, or customers in bringing success to Tesco in terms of strong customer base. Following chart depicts the results;
The response of the customers towards both the brands depict that most of them think that manager of the outlet in addition to the customers become the reason of Tesco’s success.
The last question was an open ended
Analysis
The market research indicates that the business managers at Tesco understand that the customers are ultimately concerned about the price and quality of the product that they need to purchase. They achieved success by offering bundles of products cheaper as compared to sole items. Moreover, the discounts and promotions are displayed in such a way that attracts the customers towards the products (Perrey and Spillecke, 2013). One example of discounts and low prices include displaying smart pricing such as $3.99 or $2.76 instead of $4 and $3 respectively. This is aimed at manipulating the psyche of the customers.
Tesco’s success depends upon a variety of factors related to the marketing and branding of the products and these factors can be termed as critical success factors of Tesco. Firstly, Tesco enjoys monopoly in the supermarkets business by being the third largest supermarket brand across the world, whereas, the biggest supermarket brand in the U.K. the brand image and brand entity of Tesco is so enormous as compared to Sainsbury’s that most of the people think of Tesco when it comes to grocery and households shopping. Brand image and goodwill earned by Tesco is maintained by the company managers in a smart manner by offering endless offers and wide variety of goods and services. A SWOT Analysis of Tesco can reveal upon us that the strength of the company lies in the brand equity of the company and it is a public limited company offering its stock to the general public. Moreover, the company offers wide range of products with low prices and high quality to stand ahead of the competition. The weakness of the firm is its unavailability of promotions and discounts on online stores. There are countless opportunities out in the market that Tesco management can benefit from, such as improving customer services and enhancing management capacity and performance. Threats faced by the company include technological advances, and competitive pricing by the competitors such as Sainsbury’s.
Conclusion
The research indicates that the obvious success in supermarket stands with Tesco as compared to Sainsbury’s in the U.K, which can be attributed to number of factors such as customer services, pricing, and brand management. Tesco can continue to enjoy its position by bringing innovative and convenient solutions to its customers.
Bibliography
Perrey, J. and Spillecke, D. (2013). Retail marketing and branding. Chichester: Wiley.
Thomas, P. and Chrystal, A. (2013). Using Relative Utility Pricing to Explain Multibuy Prices in Supermarkets and on the Internet. AJIBM, 03(08), pp.687-699.
