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Personalisation is one of the current buzz words in retail. This is a subject about which much more is said than done. And what is done, is virtually all around technology. Now there is no question whatsoever that tech has transformed our ability to do all sorts of things so much better, often on the back of enhanced information. But it does have its limits.

Being able to reach people with a communication of some kind presupposes the recipient want to receive it. In theory each of us will soon be bombarded with hundreds of communications every hour. This is fast evolving into a major zero sum game. Technology is often merely the messenger. While it is true that it can be a powerful enabler, it only gets you in front of the customer. Only the message can be truly personal, and if the message is not relevant, it will erode the brand relationship, not enhance it.

The retail recovery is already losing momentum, helped by falling prices in grocery and record high temperatures hitting sales in clothing. Everyone’s results are going to reflect a dampening down of demand.

Against this backdrop it is important that a retailer’s performance is not compared against its own recent numbers – it will invariably look poor. This market is one in which it is all about relative performance versus peers. When the going gets tough the key is to strengthen your competitive position, and gaining market share should be seen as an investment in future performance.

This year has seen the strongest growth we have seen since 2008. The business to have enjoyed the lion’s share of this growth have been the retailers who have strengthened their competitive positions over previous years. As growth begins to slow now, the businesses able to invest in growing share will be the winners when demand improves. So this is a period where relative sales performance will be the key indicator.

So Tesco has appointed two new non-execs. And one is a former Ikea CEO. The fact that he will be the only retailer on the company’s Main Board is surely fundamental? While the media attention has recently focused on the financials, the underlying issues faced by the company are retail ones. They have to do with a business which has lost its empathy with customers and forgotten how to sell to them. This is the background to the financial errors of judgement.

Whatever mea culpa might emerge from the various investigations, Tesco needs to wrest back control of its own destiny and this is all about retailing. Does it have the skills to do this? The huge decline in its share price doesn’t just hurt institutional shareholders. It makes senior executive retention and recruitment much harder. I suspect that just one retailer on the Main Board will not be enough

Marks launching M&S Baby is an interesting one. The idea of pulling all its baby-related products maybe sound on paper but does it sync with footfall and the way people shop? The company’s core customers have aged over time and are now in Grandparent territory. Will they represent sufficient demand on their own to justify a separate, dedicated Baby department? I very much doubt it.

I suspect that in order to work M&S Baby will have to attract material footfall from the core market: existing Mums of young kids and Mums to be. There will be very little existing footfall from this group to build on. The numbers will be extremely challenging. Given pressure on sales and margins right now, I would have thought the opportunity costs of this initiative would have been quite off-putting.

With everyone’s attention on the free-for-all in food, there is blood on the floor in fashion. With September unseasonably warm and some high temperatures promised for the end of this week, selling Autumn fashions has proved extremely difficult. This is why there are so many sales on so early in the season.

This warm weather has gone on for so long now that sales lost will not be recovered and everyone’s trading performance will be hit. Of course there is no democracy in the marketplace so some will be hit harder than others. Next’s decision to move to further segment its seasons has been done in very timely fashion. This will insulate it to some extent. M&S is less likely to escape the fallout. In spite of improvements in product quality Marks has found it difficult to make progress, even when demand across the market at large has been reasonably good.