Tesco is to divide its customers into rich and poor by using Clubcard data to personalise its website to display items geared towards your wealth.

Upmarket shoppers who click onto the retailer’s new home page will be tempted by smoked salmon and an array of sumptuous fine food. Hard-up shoppers will be presented with tins of baked beans and Tesco’s Value promotions.

For years Britain’s biggest grocer has been able to chart the spending habits of regular shoppers using its loyalty card and now it is using some of that data to tailor its websites with items aimed at individual shoppers.

The supermarket giant is fighting a desperate battle to reverse its fortunes in the UK after a dire year in which it has lost out to rivals and posted its first profit warning for 20 years.

With its website it wants to recreate some of the personal service that shoppers used to enjoy on the High Street.

Tesco boss Phil Clarke said in a speech published yesterday: ‘We are turning Clubcard digital. We’re now making changes to our UK website to highlight promotions that are relevant to the customer who is browsing the site. Using Clubcard data, we would show, for example, offers of our everyday Value range to price sensitive customers, and offers of our Finest range to more upmarket customers.’

He said if you think back a generation to the 1980s many retailers would know their customers individually.

‘Some customers you would know by name,’ he said. ‘Others you’d know well enough to give a friendly smile and ask ‘how are you today? If you knew and understood each of your customers inside out, you could give them what they wanted. By doing that, you could earn the most important thing of all: customers’ loyalty. Loyal customers are the most precious asset any company can have.’

Tesco has already carried out a trial on its website personalising certain items based on the wealth of shoppers. It carried out a test on mattresses.

Clarke said: ‘When a customer visited our website, we would use Clubcard data to tell us if the customer was more swayed by price or quality. We’d then display the type of mattress that best reflected that shopper’s characteristic. Sales grew by 10pc.’

The move to engineer its website socially is likely to be controversial for Tesco. It risks shoppers taking offence at being presented with baskets of low cost items when some might actually enjoy browsing through more expensive products.

Other grocers have also found upmarket shoppers like to mix and match the items in their trolleys - filling them with premium products such as meat, where it matters, and buying budget salt and potatoes where it matters less.

Most physical supermarkets already offer a two-tier shopping experience, filling the shelves of stores in more upmarket areas with caviar and fine wines while less prosperous regions get value ranges of pasta and canned food.

沪江英语快讯：世界第三大零售商英国Tesco日前推出商业新计划，根据客人的会员卡消费记录多少，判断客人的财富状况，在客人登陆其主页时，自动跳出与之购买力相应的商品。此举动引起了同行和客户不满，不仅有将客人分等之嫌，更限制了客人购物的自由。Tesco如今正面临改革时期，服务正在逐渐改进，就看市场买单与否了。