page_title: Tesco
section_title: Corporate strategy
hierarchical_section_title: Tesco / Corporate affairs / Corporate strategy
caption_attribution_description: English: Tesco House, the head office of Tesco
context_page_description: Tesco plc, trading as Tesco, is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer with headquarters in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in the world measured by revenues. It has shops in seven countries across Asia and Europe, and is the market leader of groceries in the UK, Ireland, Hungary and Thailand.
  Tesco was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen as a group of market stalls in Hackney, London. The Tesco name first appeared in 1924, after Cohen purchased a shipment of tea from T. E. Stockwell and combined those initials with the first two letters of his surname, and the first Tesco shop opened in 1931 in Burnt Oak, Barnet. His business expanded rapidly, and by 1939 he had over 100 Tesco shops across the country.
  Tesco has expanded globally since the early 1990s, with operations in 11 other countries in the world. The company pulled out of the US in 2013, but as of 2018 continues to see growth elsewhere.
context_section_description: According to Citigroup retail analyst David McCarthy, "[Tesco has] pulled off a trick that I'm not aware of any other retailer achieving. That is to appeal to all segments of the market". One plank of this strategy has been Tesco's use of its own-brand products, including the upmarket "Finest", mid-range Tesco brand and low-price "Value" encompassing several product categories such as food, beverage, home, clothing, Tesco Mobile and financial services.
  Beginning in 1997 when Terry Leahy took over as CEO, Tesco began marketing itself using the phrase "The Tesco Way" to describe the company's core purposes, values, principles, and goals This phrase became the standard marketing speak for Tesco as it expanded domestically and internationally under Leahy's leadership, implying a shift by the company to focus on people, both customers and employees.
  A core part of the Tesco expansion strategy has been its innovative use of technology. It was one of the first to build self-service tills and use cameras to reduce queues, and an early adopter of NFC contactless payment card technology. In 2016, Tesco developed a mobile payment wallet, PayQwiq using both NFC contactless and barcode technology to allow payment using mobile phones in-shop (along with supporting other contactless mobile wallets such as ApplePay).
caption: New Tesco House, Tesco's former head office, in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire
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