November 7th, 2023, Janice Fernandes
Tesco recently announced the departure of its UK CEO, Jason Tarry, who served at the company for 33 years, including six years as its boss. The new UK CEO, Matthew Barnes, will assume the role in March 2024.
Earlier last month, Tesco increased its annual profit projection and expressed optimism about Christmas trading prospects.
So, how did Tesco do in the UK under its exiting CEO?
According to YouGov BrandIndex, which tracks brand perception among consumers on a daily basis, Tesco’s brand health in the UK improved with Tarry as its CEO.
The brand’s Index metric - which conveys overall brand health using the average of Impression, Value, Quality, Reputation, Satisfaction, and Recommend scores – saw a steady but impressive improvement from a net score of 23.2 on 16 July 2018 the day Tarry started at the position, to 30.6 on 30 October 2023.
Further down the purchase funnel, Tesco’s Current Customer scores, which declined during the pandemic from 51.8 to a low of 40.3 on 29 May 2020, have since risen to 51.8 (30 October 2023), a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels.
Digging into these metrics tells a similar story: Impression scores for Tesco, which measure overall positive and negative sentiment towards a brand, improved from 27.8 (16 July 2018) to 38.5 (30 October 2023).
Customer Satisfaction scores increased from 35.8 to 43.4 (30 October 2023), while Value scores – which went from 18.6 to a peak of 28.7 (14 January 2022) – have dropped to 18.1 (11 August 2023). This drop could perhaps be connected to the inflation rate in UK hitting 40-year high of 9.0%, squeezing households harder. However, Value scores have started to see an uptick ending the period at 21.4 (30 October 2023).
Even Reputation scores, which measure whether people would be proud or embarrassed to work for a particular brand, have been on an upward trajectory. Starting at 11.2 on 16 July 2018, these peaked at 18.7 on 30 March 2021, but have since plateaued at around 15 percentage points. This is perhaps not all too surprising given that Tesco offered permanent jobs to 16,000 staff taken on in COVID crisis.
Explore our living data – for free
Discover more retail content here
Want to run your own research? Run a survey now
Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 20 million+ members. Speak with us today.
Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Index score is an overall measure of brand health, made up of General Impression, Customer Satisfaction, Quality, Value, Corporate Reputation and Recommendation and delivered as a net score. Its Current Customer score is based on the question: Do you currently have a car or truck from any of the following car makers? Data from surveys of adults aged 18 years and above residing in UK from 1 January 2018, and 30 October 2023. The figures are based on a 12-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
Getty Images