Free Delivery Promised by Tesco

Monday, August 17, 2020 - 16:04 by Sarah Collinson

In a bid to cope with the growing threat posed to its place in the online grocery market by Amazon, food retail giant Tesco is intending to remove all charges for delivery, according to Internet Retailing.

At the moment customers can expect to pay up to £4.50 to have their orders placed via safe shopping online delivered direct to their doorsteps by Tesco, but chief executive Dave Lewis said that this policy will soon come to an end.

This will effectively mean that there is no financial penalty associated with ordering groceries online rather than visiting bricks and mortar stores, which many customers of Tesco will appreciate, particularly during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The fact that Amazon is increasingly seen as a viable rival in the food delivery segment is the main motivator for this move, with plans set out to see its own delivery service expand to cover more parts of the UK.

Amazon is already providing subscribers to its Prime service with free delivery as an option when they buy groceries, and while coverage is still limited, Tesco can clearly see that it will soon need to be competitive on a national level if it wants to remain relevant.

It may seem odd for a firm with a 30 per cent stake in the online grocery market to be concerned about a rival that currently controls just three per cent of this same segment, yet in the past three months Amazon has more than doubled its capacity for delivering fresh food nationally, and it will only continue to do so going forwards.

Tesco has an advantage in that it already operates physical stores up and down the UK, so its fresh food delivery capabilities are tried and tested. Once delivery is free, it should be able to hold off the impact of Amazon for a little longer.