According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, Asda is to hire 1,800 staff to launch a massive expansion of its internet operations and try to claw back some of the lost ground on Tesco in the online retail stakes.
Asda chief executive Andy Bond told the newspaper that the chain is too late in embracing the online revolution, having misread the pace of the internet revolution. “We were slow to understand how big a market and how big a customer demand there was for dotcom,” he said.
Bond wants Asda’s new online business to reach the chain’s entire UK customer base by October 2007, the newspaper said.
The service is currently available to under half its customers, but will be rolled out at a rate of seven stores a month, with each store employing an extra 30 staff to pick and deliver the goods.
The push into the online market is part of Bond's strategy to improve performance at Asda, which has been slow to expand its appeal beyond its traditional low-price stomping ground, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
“From a strategic and marketing point of view we want to show that there is more to Asda than low prices,” he told the newspaper.
