Thursday 25 February 2010

Tesco and socially irresponsible attitudes to selling alcohol


Tesco's drive to dominate the high street continues. Part of their strategy to achieve this means the promotion of high strength alcohol brands, often at less than cost prices.

Many of its express stores are located in areas where there are problems related to alcohol, particularly steet violence and where they are able to boost sales by targeting the proxy purchasing and pre-loading. The former refers to adults buying alcohol for children, the latter to clubbers getting tank up prior to going out on cheap tesco alcohol.



This week Tesco took Cambridge City Council to court over its refusal to grant them a licence to sell alcohol in their Mill Road store following police objections. this comes in the same week that Diageo, the world's biggest spirits seller is redirecting its marketing budget to supermarkets in an attempt to boast sales. Meanwhile in Leicester, Tesco has been caught out breaking its pledge not to sell high strength largers and ciders in a store in a new store in London Road.  These promises were made to help Tesco overcome objections to its licence application but appear to have been rapidly forgotten once the store was open.

Given this track record I was really pleased to see Tesco has lost its court action in Cambridge.

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