Aldi Marketing Management & Planning Free Essay Report

Executive Summary

Aldi is one of the large stores in Australia that deals with groceries. Its first store was opened in 2001 and already has over 500 stores. This company has been improving the products quality and popularity of their brand by inducing several leading programs in marketing. This report framework select and outline the issues the organization should address in the next 12 months term marketing plan. This provides a solution to improving the brand image of a product and sales performance. Aldi provides best products quality products to its customers by ensuring that they spend time to check the products conformance and know the suitable brand. New entrants to the market at increasing the competition which consequentially negatively affects Aldi industry, hence should deal with some of the issues that might adversely affect its market. Based on the issues identified in the Aldi’s management, appropriate objectives are established to address the issues. It is also important to consider the opportunities that the company has in its marketing plan, target market, positioning strategy, and its demographic segment. 

Introduction

Aldi is one of the large stores in Australia that deals with groceries. Its first store was opened in 2001 and already has over 500 stores .this company has been improving the products quality and popularity of their brand by inducing several leading programs in marketing. It has improved the livelihoods of local business and come up with more opportunities for job creation and providing best quality goods in a low price (Aldi, 2019). This report framework select and outline the issues the organization should address in the next 12 months term marketing plan. This provides a solution to improving the brand image of a product and sales performance. This will acknowledge the need to solve firm problems and retain its customers and brand loyal. One of this issues is ensuring the company have suppliers bargaining power to prevent supplies from controlling prices. This is achieved by having many suppliers hence their bargaining power will be weakened. This bargaining power in Aldi creates effect the profit potential and competitive environment of the customers. It is one of the force that form a landscape that is competitive in a company and helps in control an industries attractiveness. Besides this, buyer bargaining power is another issue that shape structure of an industry. It influences ability of the seller to increase profits and brings changes to a competitive surroundings for the seller. Buyers who are stronger pressurizes the sellers to improve the products quality, offer better services and lowering of their prices (Aldi, 2018). On the other hand a weak buyer makes an industry to be not competitive and effect to profit required by the sellers. Furthermore threat of new entrants should be put under attention. When a population increase, a nation may encourage other production companies and innovators to join the market due to economic size. Abdi Company should therefore ensure that it comes up with a new brand to the market that is of a more unique in features such as color, tastes, quality and quantity. Competitive rivalry is another issue that may weakened an industry due to some companies lowering prices lower than offered competitively. This leads to increase in marketing activities by outdoing each other in order to gain market share from others. Competitive rivalry may manifest itself in a number of ways, these are competition depending on new product, advertising wars, and price competition. Traction is created when an industry feels being pressed by a competitor or come up with a way of increasing share of the market. Any action being undertaken by a company may have an effect on its competitors in the market being shared (Aldi, 2019). In turn, this will force other industries in the completive market to act by retaliating against the actions by other industry. This will harm the industry due to possibilities of this issue turning into a cycle among the industries being involved. In case a competition ends up being based on price, profit margins may be affected or be very unstable. Battles of advertising among the industries will end up increasing demand for a profit in all the industries

Marketing Objectives

Background

Aldi is an Australia company that opened the first store in 2001 and its store have expanded to over 500 within Australia (Aldi, 2019). Today it is the most prestigious retail in international business by coming up with better quality and better pricing. It sales a variety of products such as food, appliances and household cleaning goods.  It has emerged as one of top retailers in Australia and other new international market within a short while following a massive expansion. It has created impact on the grocery prices, popularity improvement and brand quality by incorporating its own exclusive concept of their brand introduced to the market (Aldi, 2018). Aldi provides best products quality products to its customers by ensuring that they spend time to check the products conformance and know the suitable brand. Aldi Has a better structure that helps solve managerial weaknesses, address some of the financial challenges and problem of the brand image. Essentially due to growing population, the government may encourage entry of other firms and innovation offering same products in order to increase production for the rising population (Aldi, 2019). This would negatively affects Aldi industry, hence should deal with some of the issues that might adversely affect its market. Dressing this issues will help to avoid competition by other rival industries by increasing consumers’ confidence about their brand.

In spite of some weaknesses that arise, Aldi has been able to expand and create loyalty of its consumers who have always build trust in their brand. It enjoys a good publicity advantage from its competitors due to better income that is disposable and lowering of its price sensitivity (Aldi, 2019). However the loyalty of the brand would depend on the Aldi willingness and capabilities to address some of the issues that will reposition its brand that will attract other old and loyal consumers to continue acquiring their brand.

Objectives

1. Creation of new unique brand by the company in order to increase sales from the threat of new entrants: This should be put into more attention by the company in order to avoid low sales and loss of customers due to entry of new competition. This threats occur due to government policies to encourage other industries and to join the market. Lowing new competitors by the government to the market place can either decrease the profitability or threat the market share (Aldi, 2019). They may also cause change in quality of a product and its price. Aldi therefore should have a plan on how to react in case of entry of the new firms in the market by dealing with obstacles and preparing to solve some of the external forces. There are some threats that are deterred to entry. They are;

Barriers to entry-This are conditions or some of the factors in a competitive surrounding that create difficulty for a new firm to start operation in a new market.

• Reduction of the price under bargaining power of consumers-The industry should monitor the prices of other competing firms offering same products or lower the prices so that the customers may not get other brands at a lower prices. The bargaing power of consumers in any organization have an effect to the competitive surrounding for sellers and control their ability in achieving profitability (Aldi, 2018). An industry can be pressurized by the strong buyers to lower prices and quality improvement and other better services. There are several impacts that determine the buyers bargaining power. In case there are many industries and few buyers, then the buyer has more power due to competition of the firms. Backward integration or producing the product themselves, the customers bargaining power is high.
• Competitive rivalry should be put into consideration by the industry-The firm should try to offer low price compared to its competitors to increase consumption of their products and thus are able to control the market share. This is a pressure in which firms create pressure to each other by limiting each other’s profit. When rivalry is high, the company may try to steal market and profit share. This are main some of the forces that shape a structure that is competitive in an industry in and creates influence to achieve profits by the existing industries.

Segmentation, target market & positioning

Demographic segment

Demographic segment plays a big role in ensuring the success of Aldi. Essentially, the target customers of Aldi entails the age bracket of between the age of 25 and 45 years old. This age bracket is the main targeted market group since customers of this age are more likely to go to the supermarket to buy household items for the family (Arup, Beaton-Wells, & Paul-Taylor, 2017). This age bracket include adults who have the responsibility of preparing food items and also cleaning the household. Therefore, this age group makes the right customers for Aldi’s groceries, food staff, and household cleaning products among other items.

Out of this age group which is the targeted customers of Aldi, the most targeted customers for Aldi’s products are females. This is because female customers buy more household items than male customers because they are considered as home managers (Butler, 2017). Women are mostly tasked with the responsibility of preparing food for their families as well as doing household cleaning and duties. Therefore, Aldi’s products are more suitable for female customers.

Aldi is located in a strategic location in the city whereby it is easily accessible by customers living in the city where they can easily go to supermarkets such as Aldi (Canstar, 2019). Customers living in the suburbs are not limited from accessing Aldi’s products, therefore they are able to purchase products through online shopping and will be delivered to their doorsteps in time.

Aldi’s products are affordable and tend to target customers who are in the low and middle-income class because they tend to be more inclined going to shop in Aldi since they care more about the price, and the price of Aldi is also suitable for their financial status (Butler, 2017). Aldi’s products are suitable for this customers as it suit their preferences, in terms of affordability. Therefore, Aldi should place these customers as a priority in their marketing decisions.

Psychographic segment

Aldi will focus on customers intending to purchase products at affordable prices, therefore products that are of high-quality and low prices will be product. Affordability and quality is critical in ensuring customer satisfaction. All good have to meet the customer’s amount they intend to spend and also has to be of high quality (Fernie & Arnold, 2002). Moreover, Aldi has to be more concern of environmental aspects such as providing a clean, healthy and suitable environment whereby customers can purchase clean and healthy food under a favorable environment. This is because, environmentally conscious consumers are more inclined to go shopping in Aldi. Therefore, cleanliness is very important and is highly valuable by customer and it must be maintained always.

Behavioral segment

One of the behavioral aspects that Aldi should consider is making sure that financial balance is achieve. It has to consider that customers who need to take care of the entire family and ensure financial balance are more inclined to go shopping in Aldi (Duan, Mao, & Huo, 2018). Therefore, Aldi should provide a wide space enough for an entire family to go shopping and also provide offers for products that are intended for families at affordable rates.

Targeting Strategy

Essentially, Aldi uses differentiation strategy in targeting customers by majorly focusing on the products’ prices as well as the attitude of customer in differentiating between the existing competitors such as Woolworths and Coles as well as the emerging new competitors. Aldi should maintain the differentiation strategy because it enables them to target the most suitable customers that match their products (Aldi, 2019). For instance, the consumers who buy goods for families and the fathers and mothers of the children are the main target of marketing managers. Therefore, Aldi should maintain offering high quality goods at affordable prices in order to attract more customers and to retain the existing customers. This will also allow the company to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. The company should also provide a variety of products which can meet the customers’ needs. By doing this, it will be able to attract customers.

Positioning Strategy

Aldi has new brand positioning that states ‘Good Different’ which helps in differentiating itself from other competitors within the growing market. Aldi attracts the attention of many consumers by offering high-quality products at low prices (Aldi, 2018). It affects consumers’ purchasing behaviour by providing independent brands and even changes the decision-making process of consumers to some extent. The company should focus in promoting its brand in order to attract more customers.

Although Aldi had initially taken over the Australian market and created a good relationship and also reputation with the customers, Aldi should also focus in expanding to other countries and providing a variety of products.

Aldi needs to increase its commitment to entering the international market. This can be done by gathering information about the market environment from different countries (Bardule, Lupikis, Butlers, & Lazdins, 2017). Aldi is slowly increasing its business and needs to promote its brand more in order to compete effectively with other competitors in the international market effective.

Marketing mix strategy

The marketing mix primarily being developed from this plan primarily focuses on promotional strategies and a brand.

Price

This approach has been successful for Aldi industry as it has enable reaching of the target market. Its brand position a daily discount that provide consumers with discounted products every day. Discount products of about 5% are offered each day and it uses unit pricing and enable consumers to clearly know about extra information on price card and comparing value of brands  (Aldi, 2019). Aldi has help the consumers save in each year compared to other supermarkets.

Promotion

Promotion increases customer’s attraction and corporate recognition. Both offline and online strategies of promotion and consumers may receive through their email some of the promotions news. Aldi communicates through twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media by encouraging buyers to improve brand and took part in interactive visibility  (Aldi, 2019). Aldi ensured that products are send to their members to test in every quarter, this enables consumers to understand their preference.

Conclusion

To sum up, Aldi has been making improvement in its marketing strategies. Aldi remains to be competitive but there is still room to improve its brand reputation and gain more competitive advantage over its competitors. The company shows to have more opportunities that it needs to capitalize on them. The threats to the company also gives it morale to work hard and over these threats so as to flourish. Therefore, for it to improve and expand, Aldi needs to strategically restructure is marketing plan in such a manner that is long-term oriented and addresses the needs of the customers.