ALDI Supermarket Chains And Online Presence: A Managerial And Social Networks Perspective Essay.

Discuss About The A Managerial And Social Networks Perspective.

Background of ALDI Supermarket Chains

ALDI is one of the German-based supermarket chains. Though it originally started in Germany, it gradually extended its operation into different other parts of the world. Australia is one of them. One of the major strengths of ALDI supermarket chains is that they give their topmost priority to their customers (Voigt, Buliga and Michl 2017). They believe in making their customers happy at all costs. ALDI is aware of the changing needs and demands of the customers. They ate known for their discounted products. They want to sell their products at an affordable price. The ALDI supermarket chain mainly operates in two main streams in the current scenario, namely ALDI NORD and ALDI Sud. In the current scenario, ALDI is operating in more than 9000 outlets in about 18 countries. The total amount of revenue earned by them is huge, they earn about 53 billion Euros turnover on an average estimated amount. They have about 100,000 employees working in all their outlets.  

However, in order to keep pace with the growing competition, they have to bring in some of the other kinds of changes or upgradations in their working. In order to stay in the battle of the retail market, they have to do a thorough market analysis and make sure that they are being able to understand the current needs and demands of the customers. As per the opinion of Brandes and Brande (2015), it can be said that ALDI enjoys a strong position in the market as it has a wide variety of products. It provides a huge range of options for its customers (Kurnia, Karnali and Rahim 2015). So, their customers can choose from a wide variety from a single store rather than switching over to other stores. On the other hand, Chatterjee (2017) has argued that in this modern scenario the customers are looking for something other than just getting a wide range of products to choose from.

The customers are looking for some extra services that will make their shopping experience much exciting and much easier as well. The customers are looking for the online retailing experience, In other words, they want to shop through the online means by sitting at any corner of their home, office, college or any place and at any point of time. Many of the customers are not willing for the brick and mortar stores. So, ALDI needs to expand their marketing operations from the physical to the online sites as well. This is one of the major threats on part of ALDI that it lacks in giving the customers a complete shopping experience.

ALDI's Strengths and Weaknesses from a Managerial Perspective

On the other hand, more and more grocery sellers are becoming multi-channeled by establishing their business online. They are creating this as an alternative to the traditional kinds of brick and mortar supermarket chains that they have. These are basically the multi-channel grocery shopping systems that are gaining large-scale popularity. The number of customers it is attracting is increasing day by day. This is becoming even more popular because smartphones have become one of the basic necessaries of life. This is evident from the huge crowd that gathered outside the Apple stores for days or even weeks for being able to purchase the latest iPhone or the iPad. So, smartphones with the latest technology have become one of the major trends of the modern day scenario.

Apart from this, it is also evident from this scenario that customers are always excited about the moments. The customers often fall in love with the brands of certain companies through the different moments that they can get to enjoy. So, in the coming years, customers will want to enjoy their purchasing moments via the online retail market rather than the brick and mortar stores. One example of this is Sports Chek, who has created a concept store in Toronto that will let the customers watch live videos, they can also ask for sample products to play with. Not only this, but the customers also suggest their own designs for their preferred Reebok shoes. In other words, they can customize their products. So, it gives the customers some very good and cherishable moments or experiences. As per the opinion of Dough, phy-gital is the most probable future that the retail markets will have in the coming scenarios. In other words, the retailers have to concentrate both on the physical and the online digital stores as well. The shopping style of people also varies as per their income (Berman 2015). The higher income groups usually shop on the large baskets and they prefer it to be done online. This makes the whole shopping experience very easy for them. They get to choose from a wide variety of products, compare the prices, see the latest arrivals, and make use of the gift vouchers or the discount amounts.  

As ALDI is operating in many countries they must analyze the shopping trends or the buyer behavior of the consumers (Melis et al. 2015). Many of the organizations are adopting the B2B technology for making their customers happier in terms of the online grocery shopping. It is essential for the grocery chains to develop the online retail sales both in the developing and developed countries as well. The electronic commerce or the e-commerce will help them to attract a number of customers with the help of the search engines (Turban et al. 2017). ALDI has to keep in mind that there is a very tough competition lying ahead of it. So, they have to build a new business model and keep on upgrading it so that they can give a tough competition by establishing a good customizer loyalty. They have to provide their customers with some extra additional services that the customers are not getting in some other alternative stores (Suel and Polak 2017).

ALDI's Need for Expansion and Online Presence

ALDI has however realized the situation and agreed upon opening their online stores. Aldi is already the sixth largest supermarket stores in the UK with 5.6percent market share and they hope to open around 1000 more branches by the year 2022. However, they need to upgrade themselves much more in to attract the attention of more number of customers and stay in the competition. As per the ALDI, this process might turn out to be complicated in the begging. However, they have realized the gravity of the situation and have arranged for the online retailing (Turban et al. 2017). They have decided to start their online wine business in order to give a luxurious shopping experience to all their customers. Wine is one of the best delicacies that people use at parties, family gatherings or any other such occasions. So, the customers always had this one wish that they wanted to be fulfilled by their favorite brands.

In order to give the customers a wonderful and memorable experience of buying their favorite brands of wine online ALDI has started its online wine store (Loose and Pabst 2018). This is because one of their major attractions is the large and delicious range of wine collections present at their store. Once they are successful in this online wine venture they will be focusing on the sale of the other materials through their e-commerce site. They have also started selling the non-food items under the category called specialbuys in their online marketing sales.

Mathew Barnes who is the chief executive of Aldi is of the opinion that launching their online business is one of the very important steps that they will be taking. However, they hope that it will be of a great success just like their other previous steps. He was also of the opinion that the online marketing will help them to reach out to some particular areas of the country where they have not yet opened their physical stores.  They have also started selling the non-food items like the Halloween materials, cycling gear via their e-commerce sites. Aldi has started its online stores both in the UK and in Australia. Aldi's attempt at starting the online stores has been more or less successful in both these places.

Conclusion

However, as Aldi has stepped into the online retailing business very recently they must realize that there are some aspects which they need to take proper care. They have to widen their array of products that they are selling online. On the other hand, they also have to make sure that the customers are getting a good amount of offers while making their purchase online. They must create a more affordable option s for both the big basket and the small basket shoppers. Aldi has to open many exciting discount offers and also free delivery systems so that the customers stay attracted to their brand and are really benefitted from the same. They must also enlist all the safety precautions on their online sites so that the customers can always stay aware of the safe online shopping habits. They have to improve on their safety precautions so that no other false sites or spammers can tamper with their discount coupons. As Aldi is already facing such issue of online fraudulent activities, they have to focus on their security and keep their customers updated.

References

Berman, B., 2015. How to compete effectively against low-cost competitors. Business Horizons, 58(1), pp.87-97.

Brandes, D. and Brandes, N., 2015. Bare Essentials: The Aldi Success Story. Linde Verlag GmbH.

Chatterjee, S., 2017. Two efficiency-driven networks on a collision course: ALDI’s innovative grocery business model vs Walmart. Strategy & Leadership, 45(5), pp.18-25. doi/abs/10.1108/SL-06-2017-0057

Harris, P. and Usuriaga, D., 2017, June. An Investigation of Offline/Online Channel Patronage Transference in the UK Grocery Sector. In Academy of Marketing Science World Marketing Congress (pp. 53-59). Springer, Cham.

Kurnia, S., Choudrie, J., Mahbubur, R.M. and Alzougool, B., 2015. E-commerce technology adoption: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study. Journal of Business Research, 68(9), pp.1906-1918. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.12.010

Kurnia, S., Karnali, R.J. and Rahim, M.M., 2015. A qualitative study of business-to-business electronic commerce adoption within the Indonesian grocery industry: A multi-theory perspective. Information & Management, 52(4), pp.518-536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2015.03.003

Loose, S. and Pabst, E., 2018. Current State of the German and International Wine Markets. Oceania, 634(2.2), pp.1-9.

Melis, K., Campo, K., Breugelmans, E. and Lamey, L., 2015. The impact of the multi-channel retail mix on online store choice: does online experience matter?. Journal of Retailing, 91(2), pp.272-288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2014.12.004

Suel, E and Polak, J. W. (2017). Development of joint models for channel, store, and travel mode choice: Grocery shopping in London. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 99, 147-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2017.03.009

Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2017. Electronic commerce 2018: a managerial and social networks perspective. Springer.

Turban, E., Whiteside, J., King, D. and Outland, J., 2017. Implementation Issues: From Globalization to Justification, Privacy, and Regulation. In Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce (pp. 383-413). Springer, Cham.

Voigt, K.I., Buliga, O. and Michl, K., 2017. Striving for Customer Benefit: The Case of Aldi. In Business Model Pioneers (pp. 11-24). Springer, Cham. Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2018. EC Strategy, Globalization, SMEs, and Implementation. In Electronic Commerce 2018 (pp. 537-572). Springer, Cham.