TESCO (IRELAND) LTD.

Tesco (Ireland) Ltd.



Tesco (Ireland) Ltd.

1- Company History / Backgroud

Tesco (Ireland) Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of UK-based parent company Tesco PLC, one of the world's largest retailers. Tesco Ireland, a subsidiary of Tesco, is engaged in operating food retail stores. The company offers clothing, household goods and entertainment equipment. It also provides online grocery shopping service, financial service products and petrol retailing service. Tesco Ireland offers a wide variety of own-brand ranges such as Value, Tesco, Finest, Healthy Living, Light Choices, Free From, Organics, Wholefoods and Kids. The company primarily operates in Ireland, where it is headquartered in Dublin and employs around 14,000 people.

Tesco entered the Irish market in 1997 and in 2010 the company operated 142stores under a number of different fascias and employed over 14,000 people across Ireland. Tesco Ireland's primary business is grocery retailing; however, the company has quickly expanded its retailing offerings as its network has expanded and as its stores become larger. Tesco Ireland offers financial services including Tesco Credit Card, Tesco Loans, Tesco Life Insurance and Tesco Car Insurance. The latest initiative was the launch of prepaid mobile phone service in joint venture with O2 Ireland in early 2007, which has proved relatively successful and now holds a significant share of the prepaid mobile market. (Anderson 2009, 15-20)

Tesco Ireland has a national presence across Ireland with its various fascias allowing the company to target city dwellers and suburbanites as well as small villagers. The company operates through its Tesco supermarkets, Tesco Metro convenience stores, Tesco Extra hypermarkets and Tesco Petrol forecourts. The company also operates Ireland's largest online grocery service, covering over 70% of the population.

Over the review period, Tesco Ireland invested a great deal of time and money in improving its image in Ireland as certain groups began to criticise the company's dominance and lack of contribution to the Irish economy. Tesco Ireland has rationalised its supply chain by favouring domestic Irish farmers and producers, with the company advertising provenance in-store and in its wider advertising. Tesco Ireland has gone to great lengths to claim that it is the largest single buyer of Irish food products in the world, spending over €1.3 billion on Irish products and services annually, and further that 50% of Tesco's food range is Irish produced with the company's stated aim to reach 80%. (Berry 2010, 24-29)

Tesco Ireland has also been keen to play its green credentials with the company opening a landmark ecostore in Wexford in 2009. The Wexford store is unique in Ireland as it creates and captures all its own water and energy needs. The Wexford store also allied the company with the Buy Irish trend by having a stock preference for local produce from County Wexford. (Miller 2010 118)

Tesco Ireland is engaged in operating food retail stores. The company's key activities, services and brands include the following:

Activities:

Operation of food retail stores

Operation of petrol filling stations

Retailing services:

Personal finance

Grocery home shopping

Mobile

Brands: ...