The big supermarkets have a curiously mixed image. We are all seduced by the service they provide. We're there every week and they've got more varieties of more foods than we could have imagined a few years ago. All very impressive, and we're hooked. Yet another level (some are renowned as late payers for example) their reputation is poor.

It is not a world I know well, but this book has helped me to understand a great deal. The story of how Tesco achieved its current position of power is in part a thriller (passing mentions of boardroom rows hint at tensions behind the scenes), and in part a technical manifesto (this is how we did it - look and learn).

It is also, and perhaps with some justification, an exercise in self-congratulation. The company has achieved extraordinary things, and this book tells you much, though presumably not quite all, about how they did it.

If you want to know about pure loyalty, as opposed to push and pull loyalty, this is the place to find it. If you want to find out about Tesco's approach to segmentation, again, it's here. For some, Tesco's is the shape of the future and if that's true - and perhaps even if it isn't - the process of their growth, its nature, style and aims, should concern all of us.

Seen simply in its own terms, in the context of Tesco and its extraordinary growth, this book tells an impressive marketing story. But in a broader context, and for this reader at least, it isn't long before you start wondering about the implications and impact of the supermarkets' vast buying power. There is an understandable obsession with saving a cent here and peseta there (how else do you reach the top?), and the marketing is scarily impressive, but what is the pact of all this on the suppliers? And ever, perhaps, on us and our expectations?

Summary
Tesco are top of the world and this book tells the story of how marketing helped them to get there. Technically and (in a narrow sense) managerially impressive, but slightly unnerving. Is this the world we want to live in?

Worth buying?
Essential reading for those in our industry anywhere near the supermarkets and their work. This could - might - be the way we're all going.