Tesco: 66 points for Dave Lewis – No.22 – Connected World

Today is 45 (forty-five) days until Dave Lewis takes the helm at the UK’s biggest retailer. Grocery Insight are counting down to the start of his reign with an improvement point per day. Due to the growing nature of the list causing issues with our template, please click on Tesco to see all the posts containing the 66 ‘to do’ points. Today we consider The ‘Connected World’ in Lincoln.

With the focus on the Propositional Extras such as Watford and Purley costing a fortune in CAPEX terms struggling to generate a decent return (given wider business pressure at least). It was curious to see the connected world store in Lincoln and how that fit into the mix.

We were wowed by the ‘mall’ style feel of Watford and the concessions; H&H, Giraffe and a wide non food offer – Lincoln had revamped non-food and nicer counters but had none of the bells and whistles that the propositional extras had. It was arguably a much more of a ‘realistic’ extra in that ‘food was first’ and there was a non-food range but it was in line with the business priority – IE there was around 8ft of TV space, not an entire back wall.

The ‘Connected World’ was the major headline in this store (along with Decks!) and it’s a massive improvement on the previously unconnected world in other Extra stores. Entertainment is a real central focus and you can see how Blinkbox could be tied in nicely if each store got a similar ‘Connected World’.

Gaming is on the increase and its heavily featured in this store, with a showroom feel to the category. A number of LCD screens and advertising means customers can see, hear and play on the various machines and tablets – ascertaining what is right for them. Technology is growing as a category too, so capitalising in this area is a good move for Tesco, tying into Tech Support, finance and Clubcard.

I thought Connected World was superb and worked really well, particularly solving the issue of technology within a supermarket. You do go into a different world (brickwork helps) and become immersed in the technology. But why was it launched into Lincoln? What about the propositional extra stores and rollout?

So, for Dave Lewis. He’d likely be impressed with this as the connected world makes a difference to Lincoln, it could drive footfall and some impulse purchases without taking up lots of space with faceless rows of televisions. However, the question is why has this dropped into a store like Lincoln when the proposition extras were the ‘latest and greatest?’ I’d counter this would have worked well in there too.

Should Connected World go beyond Lincoln? Or does it remain as a one store ‘folly’ effectively? The long term future of non-food / electricals in ‘sheds’ is unclear – connected world would certainly help. A decision around the roll-out of this would tie into solving a space issue on electricals (and likely open up some more space!)

UPDATE – A source tells me a couple of Extras are getting the Connected World as part of their refit, so perhaps this is a ‘goer’!

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