Look what Aldi is doing now
Aldi is ramping up the competition, unveilling its biggest changes since arriving in Australia 20 years ago.
Chief executive Tom Daunt says the company has often been "late to the party" - although that has sometimes meant it watched competitors make costly mistakes - but is now ready to innovate.
Mr Daunt says Aldi is overseeing a "ramping-up" of its supply chain, opening small-format convenience stores and trialling self-service check-outs and online orders.
"We know that Australians are looking for new and convenient shopping experiences, especially in densely populated areas, so we are exploring a smaller format store in North Sydney under a new store concept name, Aldi Corner Store," an Aldi spokesperson said.
The small-format stores will "offer a new store layout and more convenience-driven experiences".
They will stock a reduced range focused on food to eat immediately as well as ready meals, dinner ingredients and shelf staples. It's not known if they will include special buys.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) retail expert Professor Gary Mortimer told The New Daily that Aldi had really been an innovator in the market.
"It implemented lots of really interesting strategies that the big supermarkets have mainly followed, Special Buys and things like that."
But the new Corner Store is "obviously a replication of Woolworths' successful Metro business and Coles' Local business", he said.
Smaller-format stores will work well because they're cheap to put in place and cheaper to run, Prof. Mortimer said.
Are you an Aldi loyallist? Do online ordering and smaller stores appeal to you? Are Special Buys a deal-breaker for you?
Celia - O gees that makes me sick. I know rats are about everywhere. My son was in Westfield Parramatta a few months ago and as he came past the Fresh Fruit and Veges a large rat ran out from under the counter, a lady screamed "Rat" and ran out. He said it was the size of a small cat. (yuk))
I have an interesting anecdote about Aldi, but before I share it with you I need to make
it clear that I don’t like shopping at Aldi for the reasons detailed below.
Unfortunately, I have no choice because I have do the shopping for Clare, my ex, who
is mobility-impaired so she can’t shop personally for her favourite Aldi products.
These are the reasons I don’t like shopping at Aldi:
* There is rarely more than one register open even at peak times, so the wait time to
check out can be extremely frustrating.
Aldi are the only supermarket that doesn’t have self-checkouts, so you’ve no choice
but to wait.
* When there is a very rare PA announcement of a register opening, there is a typical
10-minute wait for the operator to actually get to the register.
I used to rush with others on seeing the displayed register number change from red
to green.
However abandoned doing that because I found it better to stay in the now-depleted
current queue and let others waste their time waiting for the other register to open.
* Register operators do not bag your products.
Aldi obviously reckoned it would improve register operators productivity by not bagging.
However the operator takes the same time in sliding the scanned product towards you
as they would in dropping it into a bag.
So the result is that there is no benefit to Aldi, but extra work for the customer.
To keep up with the operator’s rapid scanning, the customer has to frantically throw their
products into their trolley; then go to the customer counter to do the bagging: a classic
case of double-handling.
And whilst the customer was at the register filling their trolley then paying, the register
operator couldn’t serve the next customer in any case, so there is no increase in operator
productivity.
* There are no product category signs in the aisles.
There is thus a continual need to find an Aldi staff member to enquire where a particular
product is located (if you can find a staff member!)
Now the anecdote.
All Aldi’s products are priced to end in 9c.
Historically in all retail outlets, a $10 product for example would be priced at $9.99.
The philosophy was that naïve customers would regard the price as $9 instead of $10,
so thinking they are getting a bargain.
That marketing ploy started in pre-history before credit cards, so the store got it’s 1c
back as the customer had to pay $10 in cash.
Now that cash is in the minority, that practice has largely been discontinued because
the store is losing 1c per sold item on credit card transactions which adds up to a most
significant sum on the total annual sales.
The exception is Aldi where EVERY product is priced to end in 9c.
So Aldi naively believes that a customer seeing a product priced at 29c will think it’s 20c. .
Recently as I was walking down an aisle at Aldi my eyes nearly popped out on seeing a
product priced at 75c.
My eyes nearly popped out again on seeing an Aldi staff member further down the aisle;
I rubbed my eyes; yes it was an Aldi staff member actually on the sales floor!
“Excuse me” I said, with pointed finger, “There is a price error on a product down the aisle"
“Where about?” he said as he started to walk down the aisle.
We walked together to the shelf with the 75c price tag.
“Look” I said, pointing to the product “It should be 79c”
“Oh” he exclaimed, “thanks very much for letting us know, I’ll get it fixed straight away!”
Every time I go to Aldi all checkouts are open, the staff packing shelves are always available for assistance.
I prefer bagging my own products because in Woolies or Coles the checkout person is incapable of packing a bag correctly.
After shopping at Aldi for ten years the prices are much cheaper than Woolies or Coles same products.
The trolley situation at Aldi is far superior to other supermarkets car parks with trolleys left all over the place, many times rolling into parked vehicles.
If, as an adult if you do not understand why prices in shops end in .95 or '99 cents then you need a lesson awareness that to give change from money, the money must be placed in the till in order to give change which stops pilfering by checkout staff, a $10.00 note given for an item priced at $10.00 does not require change and the note need not go in the till.
The same applies to plastic card money, the item is scanned, the cost is on a docket, the item sale is recorded and the warehouse stock count is balanced accordingly, the purchases and prices are balanced at the end of trading and discrepancies can be traced.
Your eyes can pop out more when you discover that every Aldi store layout is the same from entrance to exit, and when I come across two eyeballs rolling across the floor in an Aldi store I will seek a grumpy old man who can whinge, moan and complain about Aldi but is NOT FORCED to shop there.
Do you have to wait at the doctors, or in Bunnings, or a chemist, wait for a bus, a train, wait for someone to answer your 'phone enquiry, so when you are in a queue and have to WAIT, too bad, or shop on-line, oh, but you must wait for the delivery.
I agree with Dougal,
I do not shop at Aldi as they never have even a bar code OR where the product comes from, also the money goes to Germany not Australia.
Also if you want to use a C/C then they charge an amount -- and so get their money back if you wanted to save a few cents on their 99cents thing
(because if you use a card they have to charge you the 99cents and not the dollar)
I agree with Dougal, but lucky I have a choice and never go there, tried a few times to get the special buy and they never have any, always say "we don't know when we will be getting them" so you go again a few days later and they never even get it or they say "we only had a few and they got sold out".
on the thought of his buddy zhuge qing, zhang chulan and feng baobao came to resolve the case with the help of "anywhere" business enterprise. how does zhang chulan display his competencies to assist the king trap the black hand backstage? what wonderful overall performance will zhuge qing, wang ye and others have? who're the people who covet the "8 wonders"? "under one guy-becoming a member of the world" may be introducedsoon!
PlanB, Aldi are committed to buying as many products as possible from the country in which the stores are situated, a bar code is a diagram with vertical black lines of different thicknesses, how the heck do you think they scan the items.
To all the non-lovers of Aldi who shop in other supermarkets I hope that you are happy to buy a huge amount of products from China and Asia, you have to look carefully to find products made in Australia, even then, look at the contents, Made In Australia from 95, or 90,or 85, or 70 percent imported products, frozen fish, Vietnam or China, Basa is farmed in the Mekong River which is a sewer for the floating houses in Vietnam, New Zealand or Aussie wild-caught fish is is frozen and packaged in Asia.
This morning in Woolies, the whole range of tinned fruit was a Product Of China or Philippenes, frozen chopped veggies, Chinese, many different prawns, Vietnamese.
Woolies profits go to America, Aldi profits stay with the Aldi Australia company, but Aldi never disclose profits to the media everywhere in the world.
All Aldi-haters must shop in other stores with their eyes closed and continue supporting products which are made in Asian countries, and agreeing with Dougal is the same as agreeing with a brick which is also unaware reality in everything.
Get some facts in your heads, the success of Aldi, WORLDWIDE, thanks to the multi-billions of supporters leaves Coles, Woolworth's, AGI, Spar businesses wondering how to be more successful.
Read the Aldi story before reading Dougal's whinges.
https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/3/Aldi-Group.htmlhttps://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/3/Aldi-Group.html
Your comments about source of products in supermarkets is a distraction because it has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic under discussion; which is Aldi’s ranking of perceived staff productivity to be more important than customer service.
Aldi’s major problem which adversely affects customers is having the absolute minimum staff levels.
That’s why there are rarely any staff in-store to assist customers asking where products are located because there are no product signs in the aisles.
Minimum staffing levels is also the obvious reason for not having self-serve checkouts; since they would have reasoned that providing self-serve checkouts would require staff supervision of and assistance to customers; ie: a perceived waste of staff time; far better for the customers to queue.
Minimum staffing is also the likely reason for not having a customer service counter for returns and queries as do Coles and Woolworths.
The absence of self-serve checkouts puts into sharp focus Aldi’s practice of having the absolute minimum number of operating registers, sometimes only a single one open at peak times; again a cost-cutting measure which negatively impacts customers.
Likewise, the non-bagging of customer purchases supposedly increases register operator productivity; but in reality it doesn’t, because product sliding is the same as bagging and in any case, the operator cannot deal with the next customer until the current one has dropped all their purchases into their trolley and has paid.
So the poor customer does all the work with no benefit whatsoever to Aldi’s staff productivity.
It would be in Aldi’s interests to engage retail consultants to review its customer unfriendly practices; as a result of which they could increase their market share by providing at least a comparable level of customer service to that provided by its competitors.
One obvious recommendation that the consultants would be sure to make is to scrap the questionable 9c pricing which is costing Aldi dearly in annual credit card sales; because for example every 30c item priced at 29c paid by credit card is costing Aldi 3.3%; an order of magnitude well above the .05% card fee.
Yes and I can smell a rat!
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