Tesco.com mulls 'where's my order?' van-tracking

silicon.com writes that supermarket giant "Tesco is considering introducing a service allowing customers to track the geographical location of the van delivering their online shopping, following the successful rollout of a new satellite navigation system."

According to Tesco,"50 of its drivers with ALK's CoPilot sat-nav following the opening of a new store in south London," which "has a greater delivery area than others in the region, meaning some drivers would not be as familiar with their locale."

Tesco wants to use the GPS functionality in the CoPilot system to "give more information to customers waiting for their tesco.com deliveries."

Dean Bubley at Disruptive Analysis remarked "the falling prices and increasing functionality of GPS units could lead to more deployments of applications and services linked into satellite navigation." He said, "People like geographic stuff - think of how many people have fiddled with Google Earth just because it's cool. The actual technology is a subsidiary to the way [an application] is presented though - if it's clunky, people won't use it."

Tesco chose "CoPilot as it integrates with the Intermec Pocket PCs used by drivers to capture signatures, schedule deliveries and process refunds."