Strategic Analysis: Addressing Tesco's Hacking and Competition Issues

This report examines the key challenges faced by Tesco, focusing on a website hacking incident and intense market competition. The hacking incident caused significant disruption to online bookings and customer frustration, while the competitive landscape, dominated by rivals like Sainsbury's, ASDA, and Aldi, has put pressure on Tesco's market share and profitability. The report evaluates these issues using secondary data, analyzes their impact on stakeholders (including scholars, research participants, the company itself, and its competitors), and provides strategic recommendations. These recommendations include enhancing website security by hiring experts and adopting strategic positioning models like the Ansoff Matrix to improve market competitiveness. The report aims to offer insights that can benefit Tesco, its stakeholders, and other researchers studying similar challenges in the retail sector. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

TITLE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
In the current time, each sector faces many issues pertaining to different areas and this in
turn cause negative impact over the business performance. Thus, the present study helps to
analyse two major issues faced by the company that affect its performance. In the present study,
the issue include Tesco’s website hacked by hackers and this in turn cause negative impact over
the customers. With the help of this study, company come to know the ways through which
issues can be minimized. On the other side, another issue faced by the company involves the
tough competition faced by the company during pandemic and this in turn causes decreases in
sales report. Also, the selected existing issues also affected the entire performance of the
company so there is a need to overcome such issue which in turn cause positive impact over the
business performance.
The main purpose of the study is to determine the issues faced by the company because it
affected the entire business in opposite manner. That is why, there is a need to evaluate the issues
by using the secondary sources. Also, with the help of this report, investigator can highlight the
issues and ways through which it can be improved. Further, another purpose of the report is to
determine how the suggested ways can improve the performance and attract range of employees
towards it so that it can compete in the market as well. In addition to this, it can be stated that
through the present report, other researchers are also benefited because they can use the content
as a secondary source and collect the information by analysing the ways through which Tesco
can overcome the challenge. On the other side, its external stakeholder such as company and
competitor of Tesco also benefited from the report such that they can use the recommended ways
into their workplace that assist to generate the best outcomes and stay ahead in a competition.
Overall, the existing issues are also supported from the theoretical framework which in turn
assist to generate the best outcome and support the views from secondary source in order to
derive best result. Further, it can be examined through the entire report company should consider
different models related to strategic positioning that assist to stay ahead in competition. For that,
the report suggest to use Ansoff growth vector matrix which help to examine the ways through
which it can be stayed ahead. Along with this, to improve the issue of hacking, Tesco should hire
an expertise team who help to improve the make changes in the business so that it do not lead to
affect the sales and as a result, customer remain satisfied. Thus, by following such ways will
assist to take a business at further level of success and this in turn help to improve the business

performance as well. That is why, the present report highlights the ways through which Tesco
can overcome from such issues that assist to generate a better outcome and this in turn cause
positive impact over their performance.

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................5
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................6
Challenges / problem the client (Tesco) is facing........................................................................6
Purpose.........................................................................................................................................7
Impact on research stakeholder....................................................................................................7
Evaluation and analysis of the issue with secondary data...........................................................8
Recommendation.......................................................................................................................13
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Management with project management allows for managing a any new project, problems,
opportunities or weaknesses associated with the business by applying skills and knowledge that
is needed to deliver a project and its effective management (Koke and Moehler, 2019). A
manager having thorough knowledge of project management can better manage and advise on
the issues and challenges that the business is facing to ensure that business's sustainability can be
ensured for long term and its competitiveness in the marketplace can be enhanced. This could be
ensured by management executives by suggesting techniques and tools that could be applied
within the context of business operations in order to resolve its issues and provide scope for
greater opportunities in the highly competitive market. The present report will be based on Tesco
which is considered to be the market leader in supermarket chain across European countries such
as UK and Ireland.
The various issues that will be discussed with reference to Tesco are; its consumers are
facing problems in booking and amending deliveries post the hitting of company's website by
hackers who attempt to interfere with Tesco's system and software. Accordingly, thousands of
customers are getting frustrated with the company's operation. Another issue that is existing and
affecting Tesco Plc in the present time is high level of competition. The competition in the retail
sector of UK has increasing day by day which indicate that the country has ranked first as
world's most challenging retail markets. The present report will also discuss how the competition
challenge has negatively affected the share market and profitability of Tesco company. This is a
strategic problem which also create issue for the management of company where they are unclear
about their target market.
In this report, by referring to Tesco, various challenges or problems facing by it will be
discussed by evaluating the reason for which the company is facing such issues and accordingly,
it would be connected with the company's current affairs. Next, the purpose for which this report
has been prepared will be discussed such as issue identification and forming question that would
be answered through evaluation and recommendations later in this report. Also, internal and
external stakeholders will be identified who are associated with this report and how the project
will impact them. Furthermore, secondary data will be collected and analysed to fulfil the
purpose of the report. At last, recommendations will be made to Tesco with regard to issues
faced by it in terms of how it could be overcome.

MAIN BODY
Challenges / problem the client (Tesco) is facing
Tesco is known for its immediate actions and response to the market situations and one of
the most important of these actions or responses is its ability to sell products through its online
platform where thousands of customers get benefited with this attempt of the company specially
in the times of lock down due to the outbreak of Covid – 19 in all regions of European and other
countries of the world (Tereso and et.al., 2019). However, recently it has been reported that
thousands of its customers get frustrated due to facing problem while booking and amending its
deliveries for grocery items online and the reason behind this issue was found to be hitting of
company's website by hackers. With this attempt of hackers, company's website and application
through which customers are able to book their order get down for various days not allowing
people to book new order or make amendments in existing one. Hackers have made
misappropriate attempt to cause problems with the search function on the company's website.
Accordingly, customers are facing inconvenience and the company's management and technical
are working hard for restoring all its service provision and ensuring that the data pertaining to
customers can be stayed safe.
Beside the challenge of Tesco website hit by hacker, the another and most significant
challenge the company are facing in the current period is huge competition and increase in
number of rival firms. The main and closest competitors of Tesco are Sainsbury Plc, ASDA,
Waitrose and Morrisons which is basically known as the big four companies in UK. It is found
out in research that Tesco company is not clear about its target market which is the main reason
behind the decrease in the market share of the company. It is because their main competitors
name Sainsbury and Waitrose which is upmarket offer and the discounters Aldi and Lidl. The
Price war between the rivals is leading to decrease in the price of the Tesco products. Because of
the various discounts facilities and low price of the products provided by the rivals, has put
intense pressure over the UK supermarkets to cut their price. But, Tesco fails to cut the price of
their products in order to compete with the discount brands name Aldi (Rosnizam and et.al.,
2020). Thus, this is one of the most crucial challenges which is faces by the company in the
recent years. Also, Tesco fails in analysing and understanding the demand of the customers. This

means that the customer are looking for the substitute products which is available to them at low
prices. The competitors of Tesco are able to offer low price grocery items to the customers the
result of which the customers of Tesco has shifted to other companies name Aldi, Sainsbury etc.
Purpose
The purpose of the report is to evaluating the specific issues which is related to know
about the Tesco's competitors and the other issue is related to the website of Tesco is hacked so
that there are so many challenges faced by the customer in order to order to products and
services. Also, after identifying the issues it has analysed that the report suggested the different
ways that can be help the company to adopt different strategies. Also, the recommendation help
to predict about the future uncertainty of the organisation may faced.
Impact on research stakeholder
Stakeholder are refers to the organisation and people who are interest in the research
project by this they can be affected in the positive as well as negative way. There are internal and
external stakeholder such as scholar, research participants, company, competitors etc. Scholar is
internal stakeholder that may positively impacted in order to get all the related information about
the organisation and they can use it as the secondary research because all the information are
help to provide better information by considering all the factors (Aguinis and et.al., 2019) It is
also solve the problem regarding stake for work, prioritising and categorising the stakeholder that
are invested most of the time for the research also it helps to making alliance for other scholar.
There are vast knowledge help the students for the academic purpose so that they can understand
the project constraints. To taking part in the research is beneficial in order to empowering
themselves so that they can avoid the related risk (Dimarucot, 2021).
Moreover, research participants are help in sense of empowering them so that they can
increases the knowledge for the better outcomes. There are different types of individual are
participated in order to help others and also contributing them with acquisition of knowledge.
There are some of the volunteers who are likely to participate in the project for understand about
the healthy knowledge so that it can help the people for study participation. When volunteers
gather the information about the project it helps them to understand about the evidence that are
most important for the research also there are different types of theories which are used in it. So,
that it contributing for developing the knowledge in the field of study as well as it boost up
communication method in order to collecting information from other people.

Company is related to another external stakeholder that may affect in the positive as well
as negative way because with the help of the report company can identify about the various
strategies that can be adopted by them in order to identified the risk for the organisation (Boaz
and et.al., 2018). Tesco can be identified about the major challenges that is related to competition
and the report help them by suggesting different types of strategies which can be followed by
the company. The negative impact is such as it needs to spent lots of money and time in its for
collecting the information. The other stakeholder is competitors that are played most important
role in order to identified about the different strategies used by the organisation and Tesco has
collect all the knowledge which is regarding to their customer that they are facing the problem
related to website so that they can not buy the product online. Without report it can not analyse
about the problems which it is facing and that is why the brand image of the company is affected.
All the stakeholders are impacting positive as well as negatives in order to identify about
the internal and external aspects (Hecker and et.al., 2020). The scholar are impacted positive for
collecting the information as the secondary research, the participants are developing the
knowledge about project which is most important for them. Also, company are analysed about all
the aspects which are need to focused on that so that it can give the information about the
challenges faced by the organisation. Competitors are help to understand about all the factors
which might be affected the brand reputation of firm.
Evaluation and analysis of the issue with secondary data
When the customers start realizing that they are unable to book their orders along with
making changes in their orders that they have already placed with the company, then they initiate
showing their reactions resulting from frustrations of not making and amending orders on social
media (Tyagi, 2019). The voices that have been raised through social media platform include
messages that the company has sent to inform that they are facing technical issue due to which
they are not able to access and change any orders for the moment. Also, company has
experienced that its various customers receive false messages from unauthorized representative
stating that they are required to cancel their order place with the company which is due on
certain succeeding day immediately. In response to it, company has tweeted that they are facing
technical issue due to which receiving and changing orders has become difficult but the technical
team is working hard on bringing back the things on track. Unfortunately, in response to this
tweet of the company, several customers had commented that they switch their orders to

competitive firm ASDA and Sainsbury's because their they are able to place order and receive
deliveries on an immediate basis to save the day for food and groceries requirements.
The impact of aforesaid issue was that customers are placing incomplete orders in order
to secure the slots of deliveries to ensure that they get the product on time. Consequently, what
happened due to the hacking of Tesco's website that customers are rejecting their delivery as they
are no longer requiring the products which results in millions of refund due to order cancellation
which is amounting to 5000 million approximately (Meško, 2018). This leads to reduction in
sales for the month as the company has lost great sales figures on the ground of technical issue or
website hacking.
The various consequence that Tesco faced due to hacking of its website are Cross Site
Request Forgery where hackers are maliciously requesting customers to execute unwanted
actions such as cancelling order, placing re order, making payment despite that the customers
have made it right in the beginning while placing order with the company, etc. This process
initiated by hackers is known as social engineering where victims or customers inadvertently act
on what they have asked to do like cancelling orders and re - placing orders which results in
frustration among customers and huge losses to company (Cleveland and Cleveland, 2018). To
prevent this issue, company undertake immediate training for their technical team to spot
malicious requests and revert company's customers by stating apologies for inconvenience.
At the same time when the company is apologizing its customers, ASDA steps in and
extend helping hand for Tesco's customers by tweeting that they have many slots available for
same day and tomorrow's deliveries and whatever product can be ordered by customers that they
need on urgent basis through ASDA's website. Consequently, high customer switching rate has
been experienced by Tesco as it loses its customers in the hands of its competitor.
Also, it can be said that hack of online website of Tesco was major challenge as it has
affected the overall sales and has incurred extra costs for the company in installing better
security systems within workplace for the safety. Furthermore, it can be said that due to the
hacking of systems people resist in shopping that has impacted revenue of the business as there
was fear of share and misuse of personal details (Nilova and Malyutenkova, 2020). Thus,
according to certain reports company stability could only be ensured through devising proper
strategies and methods in terms of cyber security so that future occurrence of such events does
not happen. Also, this could be referred to the diamond model of intrusion analysis that was

being developed so that activity of pivoting by hacker could be easily identified. Thus, through
use of this model the company would be able to identify whenever a pivot hack a system so that
corrective measures could be taken by the company on time (What is the Diamond Model of
Intrusion Analysis?, 2021). Also, use of such IT Models allowed the company to maintain
stronger relationship with the customers that is primary motive of any firm. Further, this model
would allow Tesco to identify the attack techniques used by the hacker so that better planning
and mitigation strategies for the overall firm could be developed in short time period. Also, it is
seen that cases of cyber attacks have been increased in recent years due to the pandemic where
people are more interested in doing online shopping. Tesco running on the large scale could not
take any chance in making people unsatisfied on any time point of time especially during those
times when scope of increasing market share was very high. Thus, all the IT issues need to be
resolved on the top priority so that future inconvenience is not faced by any of the customer
(Kunc and Križan, 2018). Moreover, overcoming the challenge in positive manner have allowed
the company to devise policies that continuously monitor the feedback from the customers so
that any slight misshapen could be resolved quickly without becoming the big problem in
delivering quality services. Also, restoring and developing trust among the customers is major
tasks for Tesco so that online app could be worked smoothly and goods could be delivered in
effective manner in times of emergency. Furthermore, Tesco has also faced many of previous
hacks where accounts of the customers were deactivated however problem being restored during
last time has now become problem at global level due to quick spread of information via social
media and journals. Also, this challenge has allowed other big companies to stay ahead in
competition in local markets through devising safety and privacy policies for its customers.
Thus, big or small contribution made by the company is being noticed by the customers and
hence cyber security issues should not be taken lightly at any point of time.
Another challenge faced by Tesco company is high competition which means that the
rivals of the company are able to exist and take competitive advantage in the UK market despite
being lower market share than Tesco. The discount brands of the UK retails sectors basically
provides similar products to the customer but at the low price. The impact of which Tesco
company also need to reduce its price of products which is quite challenging for them. However,
as Tesco offers large number of products to their customers which is a strength for the company.
It is because the company have large customer base (Evans and Mason, 2018). But in the recent

time, the company unable to understand its customers demand and preferences along with the
low income issue after COVID-19 is act as a weakness for the company. The cut in the salary of
the customers has created a situation where they have to switch to the low price products.
Also, due to lack of inefficiency in targeting the correct shoppers Tesco was not able to
cover large market areas due to which it was unable to compete with brands that are also selling
goods at very low prices in the local markets. Further, targeting the right market allows the firm
to develop goods that are able to meet certain demands of the particular group. However, lack of
specialization in any of product category might shift the customers to other substitute options
that are available in the market and Tesco being the multinational business could not take chance
to do so at any costs (Awadari and Kanwal, 2019). Further, it is seen that markets are not
targeted properly only when goals and objectives are not revised and checked on regular basis by
the firm. Further, major reason could also be inefficiency in working of the company employees
that is has not being able to target the market in correct manner. Moreover, this could be linked
to the STP analysis model that is being devised so that company is able to segment, target and
position the market properly that further help company to sell goods in large quantities.
Furthermore, through use of this model targeting of the market could be done on basis of size of
market the company would like to acquire, analysing the most profitable sectors of the country
that would further help in generating greater sales for the company and on the basis of
reachability so that goods could be made easily available to large variety of people for
consumption (The segmentation, targeting, positioning (STP) marketing model, 2021). Thus, on
the basis of various divisions the analysis of the target market could be done in the best manner
so that value of customers and sales could be maintained for longer duration. Moreover, it was
seen that due to improper targeting of the markets the quoted firm was not able to share relevant
information with the customers and thus resulted in weakening of the customer relationship with
the business. Furthermore, it resulted only in wastage of efforts that have been put by the
company in advertising certain products that were leasts purchased by most of the people in UK.
Moreover, this challenge of Tesco could be linked to failure in establishing strategic position in
the market that is ever-changing and complex at global level. Also, it could be refereed to the
AIDA model that helps company to entirely focus on the customer so that its awareness,
interests, desire and action related to purchase of any product could be closely analysed so that
greater revenues could be generated in long run. Moreover, through using this model in effective

manner the company would be able to cover large market areas as various customers would
influence other people in purchase of certain products of the company (Krasteva, Kotzab and
Lienbacher, 2019). Moreover, Tesco inefficiency in target market could be also due to various
products lines that are being introduced every year by the firm that has created pressure among
the workers to meet the set targets of revenues for the Tesco without being noticing the current
target group needs and demands. Furthermore, this also shows that company has faced strategic
marketing problems as it could not able to conduct proper pestle and swot analysis of the
companies while entering those areas where the market was completely new and customers
opinions vary on the large scale. Thus, it resulted only in wastage of the company resources and
adding unnecessary costs in the daily operations of the work (Catană and Toma, 2021). Further,
best practices of the company could only be devised when the company has loyal customers that
love to purchase different varieties of the company products on regular basis. However, due to
improper market target Tesco had to put lot of efforts in retargeting the customers based on new
goals that are set by the company in achieving greater heights in the local market. In spite of
such steps the company had incurred additional costs that could be used in others areas and
marketing plans so that better image could be developed in the market. Also, the company had
identified such challenge when the sales started to drop down at faster rates after 2019 in those
situations where other companies sales where increasing at higher rates.
Thus, from the above chart it can be clearly seen that among the market share of other
companies in 2018 Tesco share has been the highest due to the large market areas that it is been