A new type of consumer, with high expectations and a cynical attitude towards mass marketing, will increasingly pose a challenge to major food retailers, the chairman of the Quinnsworth operations in Ireland, Mr Don Tidey, said yesterday. Speaking at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce lunch, Mr Tidey, a veteran of the Irish supermarket sector, said big food stores would have to find a way "to make a sustainable, real difference to the consumer, beyond efficiency", and that this would likely involve marketing to a segment of one person, rather than to millions. Even marketing to each individual customer could prove problematic, he quipped, because "the same person can be more different on two different occasions than two persons on the same occasion".

Mr Tidey, who pioneered out-of-town shopping with Dunnes Stores's Cornelscourt development in Dublin in 1965, became a non-executive director of Tesco when it bought Quinnsworth, Stewarts and Crazy Prices earlier this year and remains chairman of the Irish company.