Lord MacLaurin epigraph — "you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years" (Tesco Clubcard, 1994)

Claim. Lord (Ian) MacLaurin, then-chairman of Tesco, told the board after seeing the Clubcard trial results that the new data outpaced 30 years of accumulated executive intuition about customers.

Quote.

"What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years."

Source. Recounted across multiple independent sources including Computer Weekly and Information Age (accessed 2026-06-21). Attributed to MacLaurin's remark to the Tesco board on first seeing the Clubcard trial results.

Confidence. Industry-consensus. Quote is widely circulated; original verbatim utterance not independently confirmed beyond participant recall.

Caveats. Like most "quoted to the board" remarks, the verbatim is unverifiable; multiple sources converge on substantively identical wording, which raises confidence to IC but not V. Treat as attributed paraphrase, not court reporter transcript.

Implication / use. Perfect epigraph for the information-asymmetry thesis. Captures in one line what 200 pages of OR textbook take to argue: the data outpaced the intuition of the most experienced operator at the top of the business.