At the Retail Week conference, Ocado CFO Andrew Bracey admitted that they scrape the Tesco grocery site in order to get Tesco prices with which they price match with 8,000 of their own products.
Sitting in the audience, I was intrigued by Ocado's admission that they scrape our site (that is, run scripts from client machines that mechanically operate our web site pretending to be a human customer. Such scripts will loop through every department, aisle and shelf, and then harvest the text of all the products that appear on the page).
It seems that the days of getting prices by wandering around competitors' branches and making notes has long gone in the digital age!
Please note: It is possible to use the Tesco Grocery API to copy all the products from our site, However using such data for price comparisons is expressly forbidden in the API's terms and conditions of use. If we detect this happening, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your Tesco API's developer account.
Showing posts with label ocado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ocado. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Credit where credit's due: well done Ocado!
Last week our grocery home shopping competitor Ocado won the BT Retail Week Technology Award for their iPhone and Android Ocado on the Go apps.
The two applications are excellent examples of applying technology appropriately for the customer's benefit - making the process of grocery shopping easier and more convenient.
I'm sure our forthcoming grocery apps will be worthy competition. Indeed if we can even do half as well as Ocado's claim that 5% of orders are made through their apps, then we we will be more than happy.
So take a bow, dear competitor, and let's see how well we do alongside you when we launch our grocery apps in another month or so. After all, with both of us raising our game in the world of mobile we both know who will benefit the most: Our customers!
I've talked about our forthcoming launch months for our grocery apps fairly openly. Isn't there a danger that our other online competitors, Asda and Sainsburys, might launch their own grocery apps ahead of us? My honest answer is: Let them! We want our offerings to be a real step change in the customer experience and, to answer the question, "Do you want it 'right' or 'now'?" we just want it to be perfectly right. I think our designers have done us proud with their thinking, and we just want to be sure with our test users.
We lost the 'First' trophy to Ocado. So we're going relentlessly after 'Best'.
The two applications are excellent examples of applying technology appropriately for the customer's benefit - making the process of grocery shopping easier and more convenient.
I'm sure our forthcoming grocery apps will be worthy competition. Indeed if we can even do half as well as Ocado's claim that 5% of orders are made through their apps, then we we will be more than happy.
So take a bow, dear competitor, and let's see how well we do alongside you when we launch our grocery apps in another month or so. After all, with both of us raising our game in the world of mobile we both know who will benefit the most: Our customers!
I've talked about our forthcoming launch months for our grocery apps fairly openly. Isn't there a danger that our other online competitors, Asda and Sainsburys, might launch their own grocery apps ahead of us? My honest answer is: Let them! We want our offerings to be a real step change in the customer experience and, to answer the question, "Do you want it 'right' or 'now'?" we just want it to be perfectly right. I think our designers have done us proud with their thinking, and we just want to be sure with our test users.
We lost the 'First' trophy to Ocado. So we're going relentlessly after 'Best'.
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