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"We are growing at the moment and in the last quarter we have hired 20 to 25," Sara Morris corporate affairs manager for Tesco Ireland told ElectricNews.Net. She explained that the company has hired 80 new staff in the year and that these jobs have been mainly in the area of local customer service delivery that includes drivers and in-store fulfilment personnel.
Tesco.ie is also expanding geographically with new delivery services in Meath, Kerry and Kildare. It has now been a year since the services first started in Cork and Dublin.
The Web site is also adding new ranges and brands to its services. Morris said, "In the last month we started offering a range of baby foods and products that have been introduced in direct response to customer requests. Soon we will be expanding the offering of fresh meats on-line."
Despite the current economic downturn, research from Amarach Consulting predicts growth in the on-line shopping market and estimates that the value of Ireland's consumer e-commerce market will be close to EUR127 million this year, rising to EUR330 million in 2003. "Consumer spending has not been that hard hit in Ireland, and if there are more cost savings being offered on-line, then people are going to continue to spend more money on the Internet," said Bettina MacCarvill, senior consultant at Amarach research. "I don't think there has been a slowdown in consumer confidence in the on-line market," she added.
Tesco commissioned the research from Amarach, which found that its on-line customers are using the service about once every three weeks with the average shopping basket amounting to EUR130 per order. Tesco.ie said it now has over 27,000 registered customers with an on-line delivery capability to serve some 720,000 households directly. Tesco offers about 15,000 individual product lines through its Internet shopping service.
In fact, Amarach's claims are backed up by Tesco's September financial results that showed a 77 percent increase in on-line sales for the grocery giant. In the first half of 2001 the on-line business reported sales of STG146 million with a loss of only around STG3 million for the period.
Tesco.ie belongs to Tesco.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesco. The Irish Web site team is based in Dun Laoghaire where Tesco.ie is maintained. The company's software is proprietary and earlier this year Tesco signed a licensing deal with Safeway in the US to provide them with its technology.
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