Tesco launches online marketplace to rival Amazon
Tesco has opened up the Tesco Direct website to third party retailers.
Tesco is now allowing other retailers to sell goods on the Tesco Direct website. This appears to be a move to compete with Amazon’s ‘marketplace’ offering.
The service made a quiet debut earlier this week and was spotted by the tamebay website. Today it was officially announced as part of Tesco's end-of-year financial results.
At this point, it’s still not clear how many other retailers will be selling on the Tesco site but Maplin and Crocus, the garden website, have already been spotted.
The move is an exciting development as it should increase competition in the online retail space.
Tesco’s big online advantage is its ‘Click and collect’ service. This allows you to order non-food goods from the Tesco website and then collect them from your local Tesco store. Currently, more than 770 Tesco stores are part of the scheme and collection points will be introduced at a further 700 stores over the next year. There are also 45 stores that offer 'Click and Collect' for grocery items and that number will grow as well.
The company said in January that its UK business wasn’t performing as well as expected and that profits would be affected. One reason for the poor performance was that sales of non-food goods at Tesco’s big hypermarkets have been hit by online competition, so it makes complete sense that Tesco wants to strengthen its online offering in this way.
Tesco said today that it was going to spend less money on new hypermarkets and invest more in its online offering as well as refitting its existing stores. Staff levels in stores will also be increased.
It'll be interesting to see whether Tesco's recent problems are just a short-term blip or the start of a longer decline. Investing in online makes it more likely that the retailer can turn things around quickly.
More: Tesco launches money-off voucher scheme | Why I'm boycotting Amazon and where I'm going instead
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And amongst the first to sell an illegal product on the Tesco site is: Maplin. See http://tinyurl.com/IllegalChargers
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Maplin used to be an electronics component supplier, not an electrical company and they do mainly supply overpriced, poor quality tat. As far as electronics components, a box of resistors which I pay £2 for (£2/1000) would be £100 from Maplin. Joke.
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I never agree with the type of comment from Mike10613 about the advantage of returning items to a shop. That method requires the expense of travelling to the shop,possibly paying for parking and assumes you can actually carry the item. When you get there you will not be assured of getting a replacement it may need to go away to be fixed. Guess what when its fixed you then go back to the store and have to pick it up, more expense. Last time I had to return a faulty item bought via Amazon. Filled in an online form, man arrived next day to collect item. Replacement was delivered back to me. No expense on my part OK I am a home worker so waiting in for collection/delivery is not an issue but I would always prefer that then dragging myself and item into a store.
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19 April 2012