Next year Asda plans to massively extend its home shopping service as it goes head-to-head with rival Tesco, and will create thousands of jobs in the process. Asda says it will focus predominantly on expansion of its grocery home shopping service, rather than the non-food catalogue, and most jobs will be needed for that.
“Our dotcom business is continuing to grow at around 30%, so next year more of our stores will make deliveries to local customers. We’ll also employ more drivers and pickers at existing stores,” said a spokesman. As it opens more stores and grows ecommerce the Walmart-owned grocer will create around 7,500 jobs in 2011, 3,000 of which are currently vacant.
Meanwhile Tesco has been in the marketing press this week as it plots its social media strategy for 2011. New Media Age reports that the UK’s largest retailer is talking to agencies about how it can use social platforms to engage in a closer relationship with customers. It’s expected that social campaigns promoting stores and services such as Tesco Bank will be rolled out over the next few months.
Tesco has 19 Twitter feeds, many of which are currently dormant. However Clothing at Tesco is a business unit that has been proactive in the social media arena. The Friday Frenzy campaign, run through Facebook, has been a recent success with Nick Lansley, Head of Research and Development at Tesco.com saying an audience of over 40,000 people was built up in a week.
