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Tesco is taking e-commerce customisation one huge step further than anyone else, displaying higher priced items only for customers it believes can afford them.
Although what Tesco is doing is bold, bolder yet are its public statements that it's not relying solely on purchase history, writes Retail Week's content partner StorefrontBacktalk. Display decisions are also based on comments customers make on social sites, which payment cards they are using and, perhaps most controversially, various types of mobile phone data.
Drilling into the details of the plan raises questions about how different the site will truly feel, and that speaks to how the data is used and to how aggressive the customisation is. For example, the more decisions are made--or, more precisely, perceived by customers to be made--about spend levels and then displaying higher priced items, the more resistance might be encountered. But if it's mostly based on showing more of what customers have been buying, it's much less likely to be an issue.
For example, The Daily Telegraph reported that one "key test" will be if a customer has purchased a lot of Tesco Finest, the grocer's premium line. If they had, much more of that line will...