Jayne Dowle: Watch out shoppers, there’s change on the cards

Now, I’ve never been to business school, so bear with me whilst I explain my theory. I think that sweet and considerate as all this cost-cutting might sound, Tesco has no choice. Every supermarket in the country, even including by-Royal-appointment Waitrose, has become locked in a super-fierce fight for the consumer pound. Budget chains such as Lidl and Aldi are packing their aisles with offers.

You might not always recognise the brand names, but as my husband pointed out after buying Belgian chocolate and bargain tins of chopped tomatoes in Lidl at Hillsborough the other week, you always get a bonus. In his case, the bonus was a mini-break. He likened the experience to spending an afternoon in Stuttgart. Cheaper than taking the plane and booking a hotel, and we treated ourselves to some decent Danish pastries to eat in the car-park for lunch. Such are the pleasures of life in austerity Britain.

Whatever you think of its expansionist ways, and the people of Harrogate, for instance, certainly have a view on that with the row over plans to build a store in the town, you can’t help but acknowledge that Tesco certainly knows its consumer-behaviour onions.

It knows that shopping habits are changing. It knows that we are not the passive creatures of even five years ago, blithely tapping in the same things every week for our internet shop, or frantically running around the store chucking everything we liked the look of into our trollies.

We’re not convinced by multi-buys, especially when we have to throw half of them away when they rot. And most importantly, these days, we will shop around to save. If that means heading to the pound shop for toiletries and bleach, then a bulk-buy discount store for loo-roll and breakfast cereal, then popping into the local market for meat and fish at the end of the day, well, it takes time, but you’ve got to keep up with us.

We shoppers are in a state of flux not seen since the Middle Ages, when markets as we know them were invented. I’m no Mary Portas, but I predict that this state of flux will continue as long as the economy is in dire straits. And when it’s all over, only the toughest will have survived.

So Tesco was waiting for its moment, waiting until the mood of your average supermarket shopper could sink no lower, waiting until, as chief executive Richard Brasher points out, 80 per cent of us are now officially the “squeezed middle” before unleashing its weapon.

He admits now that those dastardly old profiteering ways were wrong, and promises not quite a Damascene conversion, but a shift in Tesco philosophy from its bullying reputation for confusing customers with promotions, forcing out smaller retailers, and squeezing suppliers til their pips squeaked to a new commitment to charging as little it can, rather than as much as it can get away with.

Mmm. So why am I not convinced? Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because, ultimately, it will be us, the customers, who pay for this headline-grabbing campaign. Tesco is halving the number of Clubcard points you are entitled to. Let me repeat that, with a megaphone. Tesco is halving the number of Clubcard points you are entitled to. Frankly, I am grateful that I am still able to sit here at my laptop and send this column to you, because it is a wonder that civilisation hasn’t broken down over the weekend.

I was thinking that perhaps the message hadn’t got through to the masses, or that it is dis-credited propaganda put out by a rival, but I’ve checked the press release, and there it is in Mr Brasher’s own words.

In four weeks’ time, we will only be entitled to one point per pound spent, so no more double points promotions.

If you only ever shop at farmers’ markets, and this sounds like complete gobbledygook, I will translate. Tesco is reducing the Clubcard benefits it gives to loyal, high-spending, £100-plus-trollies-a-week customers to pay for its headline-grabbing initiative. However much it tries to spin it, Tesco can’t get away from what it has done to Middle England. I know people who finance entire family holidays in Spain on the proceeds of their Clubcards.

And now? Their devotion is repaid only by a promise to improve the Clubcard voucher exchange rates at Pizza Express, Alton Towers and Legoland. Is this to be the extent of our aspiration? Cheap pizza and queuing in the rain to look at bricks? I think I’d rather sit in the car-park at Hillsborough Aldi with my Danish pastries.