Tesco’s group strategy director Andrew Higginson says that there are no limits in the services that the retailer might be prepared to move into.

Speaking at the National Retail Federation convention in New York, Higginson said that the retailer would move into any service where it saw demand from customers. “We decided that we are a retailer and we will sell anything,” he said.
 
For example, he said that Tesco has ambitions to significantly grow its position in the mobile telephony market. He said that its mobile telecoms business is currently the sixth largest in the UK, but that one trend that stands out as an opportunity is how much consumers are willing to spend on mobile products and services.
 
He also suggested that Tesco is prepared to take quite a different view from other retail banks in how it runs its Tesco Bank. In particular, he said that unlike other major banks Tesco doesn’t mind if customers pay off their credit card balances at the end of each month.

“We quite like people just transacting,” he said, suggesting that other banks are much more interested in cardholders running up debts. He added that one in nine card transactions in the UK is now done on a Tesco credit card. 

Topics