Lost in Tesco? Have a sat-nav

SMALL PRINT:YOUR MISSION – should you choose to accept it – is to go into Marks Spencer and find 10 specified food/clothes items within one hour.

This was the simple sounding task given to a trial group of shoppers by bosses at the giant retail chain last year after customer complaints that their stores were badly laid out.

Remarkably, not one of the trial group (a random sample of shoppers) was able to complete the task within the allotted time. As a result, Marks Spencer is now beefing up its in-store directions and is busy devising a smartphone app which will provide sat-nav directions to shoppers.

Tesco, though, is ahead of the pack here. It’s already trialling its own sat-nav app in one of its UK shops and, so far, results are very encouraging. The idea is you store your list of shopping items on the app and once inside the store you just hit the “start” button. Your sat-nav will show you the shortest distance between the products you want and create a route for the trolley to follow.

Nick Lansley, head of research and development for Tesco says: “We now have a comprehensive sat-nav system working inside one of our Tesco stores. The new service is able to show you where all your wanted products are on a store map, show you where you are on that map, and guide you round the store to pick up your products using the shortest route.”

Tesco hopes to roll out its app in Irish and UK stores later this year and a special version is also being designed for the show-off shopper who has an iPad. Because it’s against the law for men to ask directions from anybody in a supermarket, it’s expected that the male of the species will be embracing the new technology.

No word yet though on an app which will ease the psychological pain of trying to use their self-service checkout facility, which many people find to be more stressful and time-consuming than passing through airport security. Or an app that can tell you which queue is moving the quickest . . .