Back from my shopping!
Anyway, my point was that Tesco have made a commerical decision that there is a demand / marketing opportunity for a bulk buy section in at least some of their stores. And its due to be in place for this coming weekend.
Tesco generally do their buying and planning to a fine art, based on events and weather forecasting. They try and think of EVERYTHING that might drive sales.
With the Withdrawal due to be wrapped up next week (and its clearly not going to be) its hard to avoid the idea that Tesco don't have it on their radar.
It therefore doesn't seem like a jump to say that Tesco are gambling on an event which leads to a higher than normal demand for bulk buying and if it is that, it wouldn't be surprising if Tesco are also hoping to fuel that feel and cash in on any growing sense of panic too. Plus in terms of planning, if encouraging and stimulate bulk buying now, that might help to lessen the effects of stockpiling behaviour in a few months time - or allow them to use shelf space for other items in a couple of months, by flooding the market on certain items now and counting on a drop in demand on those items at the same time there is a spike in demand for other items.
So yes I'm sure that Tesco are jumping on the bangwagon but they can only do that, if there is an underlying desire to bulk buy and people think its worth putting their money up front to do so. And you'd have to assume that Tesco have never thought that doing so was a worthwhile venture in the past.
Either way, that means lots of people are either bulk buying already, Tesco think they will start bulk buying soon or Tesco think they can gently pursuade some people to bulk buy with financial incentive of thinking they are getting a good bargin.
Its very, very interesting to see, and slightly anxiety producing (which of course leads to people psychologically thinking they need to bulk buy items they wouldn't otherwise too by deliberately trying to cash in on this anxiety).
I wonder if other companies will do things like this?