"We marketers have room in our heart only for one love - the consumer. Screw everyone else." Those are Mark Ritson's words, in his latest defence of Tesco in Marketing magazine last week.
The ongoing love-in between Ritson and Tesco is puzzling. In this latest article he seems to be saying that if small independent retailers are unable or unwilling to compete with retail giants then they should consider another career. Fair enough. But to suggest that the consumer is better served by one superstore rather than a variety of small independents is odd.
Surely, the one thing that Tesco domination takes away from the consumer is choice.
"The shops that vanish after a Tesco arrives," Ritson goes on, "are, invariably, the ones that overcharged, or offered bad service, or did not provide the best products."
Oh really? Or perhaps just the ones that believed in paying suppliers a fair price rather than driving them to bankruptcy, not polluting the environment with plastic bags and excess packaging, not refusing to engage with and share responsibility for their local communities and not getting up every day with the sole aim of destroying their competitors.
Tesco isn't in the business of serving the consumer. It's in the business of making vast profits.
This banging on about the consumer is king is itself not only hypocritical but it smacks of old-school marketing, the time when nobody cared about things like social responsibility, environmental impact and ethical practices.
Come on Mark, even the CIM has got all shy about putting the word 'profitably' in its definition of marketing. I may be marketer, but I'm also a supplier and a consumer. So please don't preach this kind of stuff in my name, thanks all the same.
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