Asda to bolster reach of home-shopping service

Asda is gearing up for a major expansion of its online home-shopping service in a desperate bid to catch up with runaway market leader Tesco.

In the past six months, Asda has increased the service's coverage to 40% of the UK and has had permission from the board to increase that to 60% by September.

The retailer is planning localised campaigns to increase awareness of the service and is considering adding further brand-based advertising when coverage is more extensive.

A promotional campaign created by Ashley Bolser Agency will include an instore drive to collect email addresses for registration, local press ads, door-to-door and point-of-sale activity.

The planned expansion comes as a recent TNS survey showed Asda was losing market share to Tesco.com and Sainsbury's, with lack of coverage cited as a key factor.

The build-up of its online offering is seen as an ideal way of expanding Asda's reach without buying further outlets. Aintree is the latest store to join its online distribution service.

In 2002 Asda closed two of its online operation's distribution centres - in Croydon and Watford - after the system was dogged by technical difficulties. Since then it has followed the model used by Tesco.com and supplied customers from their nearest participating store.

The Asda@home service launched at the end of 2000, although its then-managing director of e-commerce, Octavia Morley, had previously scorned online shopping.

She had claimed that Asda would not launch a full online shopping service because the supermarket believed customers preferred to shop offline.

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