Is this another nail in the coffin for the high street (Tesco's related story)

As the title says is this another blow to the high street with tesco's doing this, does this mean even more hard times for the likes of Argos, Woolworths and other high street shops.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=402858&in_page_id=1770

Tesco today went to war with Argos, launching a non-food home shopping service promising to end the misery of waiting for deliveries.

The supermarket giant promised quicker delivery and shorter and more reliable slots than are currently provided by high street retailers.

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It marks another aggressive move by Tesco into fields other than its traditional shops. Home delivery of groceries has been one of its most successful ventures in recent years, with Tesco.com making profits of £56.2 million last year.

The new service, called Tesco Direct, will open for business over the internet on 6 September, with a catalogue listing 8000 non-food items following two weeks later. Around 20 million catalogues will be printed.

Tesco's finance and strategy director Andrew Higginson said the company's research showed customers were fed up with having to wait in all day for deliveries that do not turn up when promised. He said 63 per cent of shoppers have had to wait in for a day or more for a delivery in the past year, while 43 per cent named long waiting times as the biggest drawback of home shopping.

He added that the aim of Tesco Direct: "is to create a service that works to our customers' timeframe, not ours.î Thew new venture promises next-day delivery within a two hour time slot up to 11pm for smaller items such as kitchenware.

There will also be an option to collect purchases up from stores after 4pm on the day after the order is made. Bulkier deliveries such as beds and sofas will take between five and 10 days to arrive.

Tesco has prepared for the launch by poaching around 100 non- food buyers in recent months, many from its new arch rival Argos.

The retailer has seen its nonfood sales grow dramatically over the past five years, with new product ranges aimed at hurting established retailers such as Boots and WH Smith.

One report earlier this month forecast that Tesco would become Britain's biggest nonfood retailer in 2006, over taking the owner of Argos and Homebase, ARG. The awesome buying power of supermarket giants such as Tesco, and Asda's parent company Wal-Mart, means they can undercut the prices offered by specialist retailers, including other major retailers.

Last year non- food sales growth on the high street as a whole to just 0.9 per cent, but in supermarkets they shot up by

8.4 per cent, boosting their combined market share from 8.5 per cent to 9.1 per cent.

Reply 1

Perfectly_Imperfect

that's quite sad really.

I can see in the not so distant future that we'll have to choices when shopping~~ tesco or wal-mart

Reply 2

kitty_koo

my brother (who works at Argos) was telling me about that, only about 15% of Tesco's stores will have that new Tesco's service and items have to be ordered from there and then picked up on another day....im gonna stick with Argos