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Customer Question Time (CQT) meetings take place in all our stores around the world. For example, this year 1,500 customers in Hungary and 9,000 customers in the UK have attended CQTs. They help us to identify and respond to changing customer needs – for example in the UK, customers told us that they do not like throwing carrier bags away, so we increased the carrier bag recycling facilities in our stores and introduced degradable carrier bags.

This year we held a CQT on disability. Feedback from the session, which went to the Tesco Board, has helped us to better understand the shopping patterns of our disabled customers, their requirements for parking spaces in our car parks and the need to train our staff to recognise disabilities. During 2005, we will be holding CQTs hosted by disability organisations each quarter.

Public attitudes to Corporate Responsibility

Every year we commission an independent survey of public attitudes in the UK to Corporate Responsibility and to Tesco. The findings of more than 2,000 face-to-face interviews carried out in July and August 2004 were that:

• 43% believed that only ‘a few’ companies are genuinely doing all they can to be more responsible;
• Tesco was most frequently named as the company which helps the community and society. In an unprompted question, Tesco was named by 30% of people, the Co-op next by 10%;
• Tesco was the third most frequently named company when respondees were asked to name a particularly socially, environmentally or ethically responsible company. The Body Shop and the Co-op were listed first and second;
• 56% said that Tesco had a positive effect on their local community, and 8% said that the effect was negative;
• Where respondees thought that we should take our responsibilities more seriously, they said we should invest more in the community and the environment, reduce packaging, reduce prices and consider our impact on small businesses.

We take this as powerful evidence that we are doing a good job in our efforts to be responsible and a valued member of society. However, we recognise that there are areas in which we can do better, and we are focusing our efforts on these.