ABSTRACT
In 1919, Jack Cohen used his £30 ex-serviceman payment to establish a market stall selling groceries in East London. By 2004-2005, 85 years later, Tesco, the company Jack Cohen founded, had profits of £2,064 million from 1,780 stores in 14 countries. The origins of present-day Tesco lie in strongly opportunistic behaviour that determined the culture of the firm for several decades. The adoption of a strategic approach and the intense focus on marketing date from the last three decades. The development of the international presence, which by 2005 accounts for almost 50 per cent of the sales space of Tesco, has a very recent origin with substantive activity being less than a decade old. The core strategy has been to develop a strong domestic base as a launch-pad for internationalization with the transfer of marketing concepts into non-domestic markets.Throughout this development over 85 years, an entrepreneurial culture has permeated all activities, initially in an opportunistic way and more recently in a strategic framework.
