Depending on the point of focus, the market strategies set and practiced within the large-scale food retailer firms might be categorized as outside-in and inside-out. Each of the categories maintains a set of its own benefits as well as disadvantages, which come from the management team prioritizing certain tools over others to maximize efficiency in the chosen areas. The outside-in firms are customer-oriented and ensure their value proposition to the customers is consistently as high as possible (Rust, 2020; Whitler & Puto, 2020).
They often incorporate a variety of different promotions into their everyday marketing tactics or at least such is the case with Tesco (Evans & Mason, 2018). Until this point, Tesco has been using the outside-in strategy exclusively, which resulted in high levels of customer engagement but low levels of understanding of the internal needs of the company (Rosnizam et al., 2020). This resulted in the loss of precision and, to a degree, brand culture in some of the most recent marketing campaigns.
By comparison, its main competitor in the segment of budget food retail, Aldi, maintains a cohesive and consistent environment within the company but fails to maintain productive and regular contact with its customers. I believe that a hybrid strategy not only can bust but should be achieved, particularly since the interactions with the market have long been Tesco’s biggest strength (Alam & Raunt-Roy, 2019).
The firm must consider delegating greater attention and time to potential internal problems and inconsistencies without disregarding this strength entirely. Resources and tools may be re-distributed in a more balanced way, thus ensuring productive work relationships among the staff members and process efficiency (Asseraf & Shohum, 2019; Goddard, 2020). Such changes to the strategy would ensure a more well-rounded company that may compete successfully in an increasingly more populated market of low-cost grocery retail.
References
Alam, S., & Raut-Roy, U. (2019). Evaluating the Effectiveness of Reward Strategy at Tesco: Evidence from Selected Stores in UK. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 55(1). Web.
Asseraf, Y., & Shoham, A. (2019). Crafting strategy for international marketing: outside-in or inside-out?. International Marketing Review, 36(6), pp. 859-886. Web.
Evans, B., & Mason, R. (2018). The lean supply chain: managing the challenge at Tesco. Kogan Page Publishers.
Goddard, E. (2020). The impact of COVID‐19 on food retail and food service in Canada: Preliminary assessment. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1(1). Web.
Rosnizam, M. R. A. B., Kee, D. M. H., Akhir, M. E. H. B. M., Shahqira, M., Yusoff, M. A. H. B. M., Budiman, R. S., & Alajmi, A. M. (2020). Market Opportunities and Challenges: A Case Study of Tesco. Journal of the Community Development in Asia (JCDA), 3(2), 18-27. Web.
Rust, Roland T. (2020). “Outside-in marketing: Why, when and how?.” Industrial Marketing Management, 89 (1): 102-104. Web.
Whitler, K. A., & Puto, C. P. (2020). The influence of the board of directors on outside-in strategy. Industrial Marketing Management, 90, 143-154. Web.