Customer Experience at Aldi and Lidl

This assignment requires you to analyze the customer experience strategies employed by Aldi and Lidl. You should examine various aspects contributing to their positive reputation for shopping experiences, such as pricing strategies, product selection, store layout, employee interactions, and omnichannel presence. The analysis should be supported by relevant research, case studies, and industry trends.

Running head: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGMEMENT
Customer Experience Management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Executive Summary
This is a report, which will depict the customer experience management of the organization
named ALDI. The retail global market scenario is changing at a rapid arte and there is no loyalty
among the consumers for a particular brand. The consumers are looking for best deals and
supermarkets that are able to provide them with the best experience. Thus, it can be concluded
from the report that the organization will have pay more focus on the changing the quality of the
product they are offering. Customer experience management is one of the major factors in
providing the organization with competitive advantage in the market. This will enable the
organization to identify their weaknesses and the shortcomings which will help in improving the
business model. The organization will have to pay more focus on the different types of the
consumer personas to educate their staffs of dealing with them in better way. Thus, it can be
concluded that the customer perspective will vary depending on the personas.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Background......................................................................................................................................3
Customer Personas...........................................................................................................................4
Research Tools.................................................................................................................................5
Existing Customer Data...................................................................................................................6
Customer Map.................................................................................................................................7
Relationship.....................................................................................................................................8
Innovator..........................................................................................................................................9
Analytical.........................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
This is a report, which will depict the customer experience management of the
organization named ALDI. The retail global market scenario is changing at a rapid arte and there
is no loyalty among the consumers for a particular brand. The consumers are looking for best
deals and supermarkets that are able to provide them with the best experience. ALDI is one such
organization, which has gained popularity in the market due to the competitive prices and the
level of service the hard working employees in the organization provide to the consumers
(Peterson, 2016). The report will highlight different consumer personas, the research tools,
surveys, interviews, customer-mapping experience, and competitor analysis of two rival
companies named ALDI and Woolworths.
Background
ALDI is a German retailer of grocery chain, which started in Essen in the year of 1913.
The organization expanded its business to Australia in the year of 2001 and initially its growth
was slow as they faced heavy competition from the already established companies in the market.
Woolworths and Coles have been the market leaders in the industry but the growth of ALDI in
the past decade has been commendable as it was able to capture a huge amount of market share.
This has been possible for the organization because of their aggressive marketing strategy,
backward integration and customer experience management. The organization has been able to
provide the customers with high quality of products at cheaper prices. These have facilitated in
providing them with competitive advantage in the market. Thus, the organization will be able to
maintain their long-term sustainability in the market (Welcome to ALDI, 2017).

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Customer Personas
Innovator, relationship and analytical are the consumer personas that has been chosen for
highlighting the perspective of the customers. The personas that are social and interactive can be
acknowledged as relationship type. These types of personas are more focused on social
interaction and they are not interested in the specification of the product. Thus, ALDI will have
to use aggressive strategy for marketing if they want to grab the attention of this type of
consumers. ALDI will have to use more promotional events and advertisements to grab the
attention of these types of consumers. Moreover, the use of social media is also feasible for
pursuing this type of consumers, as their level of social interaction is more (Schäfer & Klammer,
2016).
The next type of personas can be acknowledged as the analytical personas and they pay
more attention to their past experiences. They judge products based on the standards that have
been developed in the market and they always set a benchmark before choosing a product. Thus,
products that have been differentiated will have minimum affect on this consumer types. Thus,
the products developed by the organization will have to meet all the industry standards as they
will have a tendency of comparing the product with the other similar products in the market.
Therefore, tradition marketing methods will be best suited for this type of personas as they have
the tendency of evaluating the product by keeping in mind the industry standards. ALDI is
known for providing their products under their own brand name. The qualities of the products
they offer are similar to that of other competitors in the market but are priced cheaper. Thus, by

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maintaining the industry standards the organization will be able to retain these consumers
(Vossen, Becker & Kraume, 2017).
The final type of personas that will be discussed are the innovators that are independent
and flexible. They have a completely different kind of personality when compared to the
previous kind of personas and can be easily pursued to grab their attention. The important factors
for grabbing the attention of this type of consumer personas are creativity and innovation.
Moreover, they prioritize these factors over any other features of the product. Thus, innovation in
product promotion and product development is the key to acquire these kinds of consumer
personas. According to various surveys, it can be said these kinds of consumer personas are
eager to try out the new products that are launched in the market. Therefore, the organization has
the best opportunity of grabbing the attention of this type of consumers as they are launching a
new product in the market. Thus, the product should have a unique selling proposition with
affordable price, which will enable them to grab the attention of the consumers in the market
(Schäfer & Klammer, 2015).
Research Tools
The research tools that are used for enhancing the experience of the customers are as
follows:
 Mobile customer support: The internet consists of huge amount of information and most
of the available data is irrelevant. Thus, providing consumer support is a suitable option
for the organization as they prefer using mobiles. This will enable to provide a better
experience to the consumers (Hamka et al., 2014).

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 Omni channel support: The organization will have to provide the consumers with more
options of communicating with the organization. Thus, the consumers will be able to
choose their convenient mode of communication for conveying their grievances and
queries to the organization. Thus, this will facilitate in providing the consumers with
better satisfaction level (Verhoef, Kannan & Inman, 2015).
 Social media support: The popularity of social media has increased rapidly and it has
presented the consumers with the opportunity of interacting and giving suggestion to the
organization. This will help to maintain transparency among the organization, which in
turn will help in providing g the organization with better consumer experience (Fan &
Gordon, 2014). Self-service management: there are some general queries among the consumers, which
will have to be provided on the website of the organization. This will help to save a lot of
time for the consumers in the market.
 Live chat: live chat will help tom provide information to the clients according to their
specific needs and wants. Thus, the organization will be able to provide the exact
requirement according to their desired needs.
Customer Interview
Q1. What according to you is customer experience management?
First Customer: The first customer stated that customer experience management is a strategy to
measure the tracking details of the customers. The tracking can be of anything that is what
product they are buying, what pricing range they prefers and what are the factors that attracts
them to come for the next time.

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Second Customer: The second customers stated that organize every interaction between a
customer and the organization is the major functionality of customer experience management.
This interaction can be through social media or personal messages.
Third Customer: According to this customer considering both conscious and subconscious
perceptions of the customers for managing the relationship is the customer experience
management. Company should address their nature to attend each customer and liable to make
their experience worthy enough to attract them for next purchase.
Fourth Customer: This customer believes that delivering exceptional service at every touch point
with the customer is the major concern of an organization. It can be addressed as the sum of all
the experiences a customer has with a business during their tenure time.
Fifth Customer: The quality of an individual experience regarding the company’s attitude
towards their customers, quality of the products and the innovation they make for attracting the
customers is important aspect for customer experience management.
Q2. Do you think it customer experience management is important?
First Customer: According to the first customer, product specification is most important and thus
he believes that tracing products details and their buying behaviour will help them in maintaining
and enhancing their customer base.
Second Customer: This customer stated that customer experience management is important
throughout the customer lifecycle as this will provide customer retention and profitability to the
organization.

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Third Customer: This customer stated that customer experience management is important as it
strengthen brand preference through differentiated experiences. This customer also believes that
this management process improves customer loyalty and creates advocates.
Fourth Customer: The experience management is crucial for an organization as it boost revenue
with incremental sales from existing customers. It is also believed by this customer that if the
existing customer gets satisfied, they can generate new sales from word of mouth.
Fifth Customer: The different the experience provided by an organization to their customers, the
greater will be the assurance that a customer will understand why that company is different from
their competitors.
Q3. How ALDI provides you customer experience and are you satisfied?
First Customer: ALDI provides limited range of products that allow customer of every income
group to purchase things from their organization. They also update their products and service
initiatives through social media sites in order to update their customers.
Second Customer: The quality of the products that ALDI is of premium quality and the price are
also of reasonable price range. They also denies to store branded products like Coca-Cola that
overlooks the ethical business procedures.
Third Customer: The most important thing that ALSI always recruited good and talented
employees. This customer believes that the way staff behaves with customers is an important
factors and that is followed by ALDI.

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Fourth Customer: They have innovated not only their products but also their packaging. About
95% of ALDI’s products are private label and these labels are eco-friendly. Thus, this customer
believes that their products are less harmful to planer earth.
Fifth Customer: This customer like that way ALDI tracks the information of their customers.
They greet all the customers individually with the ongoing offers to attract all their customers.
Existing Customer Data
Figure 1. Customer Data of Supermarkets
Source: (Chung, 2015)
This figure shows that ALDI is the provider of best customer and the level of satisfaction
of the consumer is the highest. When compared with the other competitors, the study suggests
that Woolworths being the market leader is providing the consumer with least satisfactory
service. Woolworths and Coles have the majority of the shares in the market in Australia but

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they are way behind in customer satisfaction level. However, ALDI is lagging behind in the
variety of the products they are offering and so they will have to extend their product line to
incorporate more products in their product line. The organization is growing at a rapid rate and
extending of their product line will facilitate in acquiring more number of consumers. Moreover,
the organization has the scope of improvement in the field of customer satisfaction and makes
use of the above-mentioned tools. These tools will assist in providing better customer
relationship management in to the organization (Anderson, 2015).
Customer Map
Figure 2. Customer Experience Map
Source: As created by author
The customer experience map is used to depict the experience of consumers before,
during and after the purchase of the product. The first mapping stage includes the experiences
NEED GENERATIONINITIAL CONSIDERATION
ENGAGEMENTEVALUATIONMOMENT OF PURCHASE
DELIVERY INSTALLATION
USAGE

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before the procurement. This will consist of need generation and initial consideration, which will
highlight the need of the consumer and the options the customers have. The second mapping
stage will include engagement and evaluation; the customer will engage in conversation with the
service provider and evaluate the options. The final stage will include the moment of purchase,
delivery installation and usage, which will depict the overall experience of customer from
purchasing of the product until the usage of the product (Stringfellow, 2017).
Relationship
These personas will choose the products depending upon the relationship with the staffs
and the organization. The consumer bought the product launched by the organization without any
hesitation. However, the employees had to engage in conversations with the customer to
convince her to purchase the product. The customer had a relatively satisfactory experience
before the purchase of the product and felt that her need has been recognized in a proper way.
During the purchase of the product the level of satisfaction among the consumers was good as
she was able to evaluate the products in an effective way with the help of the staffs. However,
the experience after the purchase of the product was not satisfactory for the customer as it could
fulfil her explanation (Rahimi & Kozak, 2017).
Innovator
The staff did not have to pursue the client to buy the products and they brought the
product without any convincing from the staff. The experience of the consumer before and
during the procurement was satisfactory. On the contrary, there consumer was not happy with
product quality which could not meet the expected requirements.

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Analytical
The consumer critically analyzed the product, which were accompanied by a lot of
questions. This was the toughest of the consumers and the staff had a hard time in convincing the
consumer to make the purchase of this product. However, the consumer was not satisfied with
the reasoning provided by the staff and not at all happy with the quality of the product. Thus, the
customer experience map shows that the consumer was not happy with the quality of the product.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded from the report that the organization will have to pay more
focus on the changing the quality of the product they are offering. Customer experience
management is one of the major factors in providing the organization with competitive
advantage in the market. This will enable the organization to identify their weaknesses and the
shortcomings which will help in improving the business model. The organization will have to
pay more focus on the different types of the consumer personas to educate their staffs of dealing
with them in better way. Thus, it can be concluded that the customer perspective will vary
depending on the personas.

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References
Anderson, E. (2015). Aldi and Lidl named world's top brands for shopping
experience. Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 10 November 2017, from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11983715/Aldi-
and-Lidl-named-worlds-top-brands-for-shopping-experience.html
Chung, F. (2015). Australia’s best supermarket revealed. NewsComAu. Retrieved 10 November
2017, from http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/the-supermarket-switch-is-
on-as-aldi-takes-top-award-in-customer-satisfaction/news-story/
3ce35413bb26d01118190010c9cb0916
Fan, W., & Gordon, M. D. (2014). The power of social media analytics. Communications of the
ACM, 57(6), 74-81.
Hamka, F., Bouwman, H., De Reuver, M., & Kroesen, M. (2014). Mobile customer
segmentation based on smartphone measurement. Telematics and Informatics, 31(2),
220-227.
Peterson, H. (2016). Aldi is fixing is biggest weakness - and that should terrify Whole
Foods. Business Insider. Retrieved 10 November 2017, from
http://www.businessinsider.in/Aldi-is-fixing-is-biggest-weakness-and-that-should-terrify-
Whole-Foods/articleshow/50702061.cms
Rahimi, R., & Kozak, M. (2017). Impact of customer relationship management on customer
satisfaction: The case of a budget hotel chain. Journal of Travel & Tourism
Marketing, 34(1), 40-51.

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Schäfer, A., & Klammer, J. (2015). Service-Dominant Logic in Practice—Using Online
Customer Communities and Personas. Marketing Review St. Gallen, 32(5), 90-96.
Schäfer, A., & Klammer, J. (2016). Service Dominant Logic in Practice: Applying Online
Customer Communities and Personas for the Creation of Service
Innovations. Management (18544223), 11(3).
Stringfellow, A. (2017). Ultimate Guide to Customer Experience Mapping: How to Map the CX
from Start to Finish. NGDATA. Retrieved 10 November 2017, from
https://www.ngdata.com/creating-a-customer-experience-map/
Verhoef, P. C., Kannan, P. K., & Inman, J. J. (2015). From multi-channel retailing to omni-
channel retailing: introduction to the special issue on multi-channel retailing. Journal of
retailing, 91(2), 174-181.
Vossen, G., Becker, J., & Kraume, K. (2017, November). Towards Efficient and Informative
Omni-Channel Customer Relationship Management. In Advances in Conceptual
Modeling: ER 2017 Workshops AHA, MoBiD, MREBA, OntoCom, and QMMQ,
Valencia, Spain, November 6–9, 2017, Proceedings (Vol. 10651, p. 69). Springer.
Welcome to ALDI. (2017). Aldi.com. Retrieved 10 November 2017, from https://www.aldi.com/