Click, Shop, Compete: Asda’s New ‘Xpert’ Tool Aims to Narrow Gap with Tesco

Supermarket giant Asda is aiming to ramp up its online shopping operation – at £3.2bn a year in sales is half of the size of Tesco’s – by launching a new ecommerce insight and collaboration platform.

According to Asda, the new platform has been designed to better help the supermarket and its suppliers understand, and, more effectively meet, the needs of its online shoppers.

It will work by providing brands with advanced data-driven insights, enabling them to optimise product performance, track market trends, and make smarter category decisions for the ecommerce site.

Asda Xpert will also integrate digital shelf analytics and real-time performance data to help suppliers drive mutual category growth and improve decision-making, while providing brands with the information they need to maximise growth, optimise strategies, and better serve customers in an increasingly competitive online retail space.

The move follows 2024’s implementation of a real-time generative AI platform for data driven decision-making, developed by London-based AI specialist Harley. This platform already provides Asda’s leadership with live, actionable insights, enabling executives to make quicker and more informed decisions.

Meanwhile, Asda recently also extended its technology partnership with Retail Insight, a provider of store operations software, with a view to improving on-shelf availability and the in-store experience.

The tie-up involves a full store roll-out of Retail Insight’s Inventory Insight solution into Asda’s operates 800 outlets – from supercentres, superstores and supermarkets to Asda Living stores, petrol stations and depots. The supermarket serves 18 million customers every week.

Meanwhile, the company has once again gone back to the future, having already resurrected “Rollback”, it is now digging up “That’s Asda Price” from the 1970s, in the first work from agency Lucky Generals, which was appointed to the account in April this year.

Back in March, Leighton, the former group marketing director and CEO who returned in November last year, laid out his four point plan for turning around the retailer and “regaining customers’ trust”, with his strategy focusing on price, product ranges, people and the store experience.

Source: Decision Marketing