Tesco obsessed with Ocado obsessed with Tesco

Archived article dated Friday July 4th 2008

For years grocery home delivery company Ocado kept pretty quiet about its activities but in recent months it has become increasingly vocal.

By Glynn Davis

What seemed to start this activity was the criticism the company began to receive about its inability to make a profit and whether it would ever get its numbers into positive territory.

Much of this was fuelled by comments from Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy who questioned its viability. It is not unusual for Tesco to raise such a question as I regularly had conversations a number of years ago with a former senior figure at Tesco.com. But the difference was that he was very much off-the-record whereas Leahy going on-the-record is a completely different deal.

This prompted Ocado to go on the offensive. It launched its ad campaign that had a dig at Tesco and the Ocado management started appearing in various publications raising their own questions about Tesco's online model and how Ocado could price match Tesco while also offering a vastly superior level of service.

They also suggested that Leahy and Tesco had an obsession with Ocado, which might be true but based on recent evidence I'd say that Ocado also has an obsession - with Tesco. Which is no bad thing as Tesco's early success was based on watching what everybody else was doing and then copying it.

Tagged as: tesco | ocado | home delivery

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