Improving Customer Service for ALDI's Express Ourselves Marketing Campaign

This article discusses ways in which ALDI can improve their level of customer service as part of their Express Ourselves marketing campaign. Strategies include training and development, personalized customer experience, and prompt service.

MARKETING PLAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Marketing TOWS for ALDI and marketing audit principles and practises.................................1
3 marketing Objectives for “Express Ourselves marketing campaign” over a period of 12
months..........................................................................................................................................3
Marketing Mix plan for achieving desired marketing objectives over 12 moths time period.....4
Ways in which ALDI can bring improvement within their level of customer service as a part
of “Express Ourselves marketing campaign”..............................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Marketing plan can be defined as a blueprint or document that helps an organization to
outline marketing and advertising efforts or strategies for future (Chen and Yang, 2019).
Marketing plan mainly focuses on description of all kinds of business activities that are involved
in achievement of desired marketing objectives within a set or desired duration of time period. In
order to develop an effective and appropriate marketing plan it is it is important for organizations
to understand needs and requirements of their customers as it will also help them to understand
things or factors they need to focus on while developing a marketing plan. This assignment will
focus on marketing plan of ALDI. ALDI is a German super market that was founded in 1913
whose headquarter is in Germany. They have more than 10000 stores present in more than 20
countries. This assignment will further lay emphasis on ALDI marketing TOWS, marketing
campaign marketing objectives, marketing mix to achieve desired marketing objectives and ways
in which customer service level of ALDI can be improved.
MAIN BODY
Marketing TOWS for ALDI and marketing audit principles and practises
Marketing is a kind of interpretation or evaluation of both internal and external marketing
environment of an organization (Miclea, Izvercian and Buciuman, 2016). Marketing audit
provides organizations with an opportunity to understand ways in which they can enhance their
overall performance, sales and customer base. There are various reasons because of which an
organization conduct marketing audit. Some of the common factors because of which marketing
audit is conducted is marketing resources that are under-utilized by the company, changes
required to be brought within current business strategies, ways to enhance marketing position of
the business and many more. There are various kinds of methods or tools that can be used by a
company to understand or explain marketing audit that an organization currently undergoes. One
of the most commonly used tool that can be used for marketing audits is SWOT analysis in
which strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization analysed by evaluating
their internal and external capabilities (Riaz, Ali and Madni, 2016). There is an expanded version
of SWOT analysis that can be used by organization which is known as TWOS. It is an extended
version of SWOT because it is majorly derived from it. TWOS analysis can be used to
understand marketing audit of ALDI. Construction of Marketing TOWS if ALDI is as follows:
Marketing TOWS of ALDI
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TOWS Strengths
ALDI has a strong distribution
network
They have strong base of
reliable suppliers
They have built an expertise of
successfully entering into a new
market
They have a strong brand
portfolio
Lower cost structure help ALDI
to gain competitive advantage
over competitors.
Weaknesses
Net contribution % of ALDI and
profitability ratio of ALDI is below
industry ratio.
Days inventory is quite high as
compared to competitors.
Need to invest more on technology
in order to integrate process across
the board
High employee turnover and lower
employee motivation (Kupec, 2018).
Lower amount of spending on
research and development as
compared to competitors.
Opportunities
Market development can help
ALDI to gain competitive
advantage and dilute competitor’s
advantage
New environmental policies can
be a great opportunity for ALDI to
enhance their market share.
As disposable income of people
are increasing, inflation in
economy is expected to remain
low.
SO
By using their strong portfolio
and new environmental
policies, ALDI can enhance
their market share.
Using their strong distribution
network company can expand
their business in new target
market.
Development of new
environment friendly product
can also help ALDI to gain
competitive advantage and
using their low cost strategy
they can attract more number of
customers and enhance their
customer base.
WO
By focusing and implementing new
environmental policies and investing
more on implementation of new
technology can help ALDI
enhancing their market share and
gaining competitive advantage. This
will further help ALDI to attract
more customers
Providing incentive packages and
increasing payroll of employees can
help them to reduce employee
turnover rate and increase working
morale. This is possible as
disposable income of people are
high and operational cost of ALDI is
lower
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Threats
New technologies developed by
competitors can be a threat to
ALDI as because of this
competition in the market is
increasing
Rising raw material can be a threat
to profitability of ALDI.
Increasing number of new entrant
can be threat to ALDI
ST
Usage of strong distribution
network in order to reach to the
customers and provided desired
products to them can help them
to fight with new entrants
entering into their current
market.
WT
Spending more on research and
development can help ALDI to
compete against their competitors.
3 marketing Objectives for “Express Ourselves marketing campaign” over a period of 12 months
In order to develop a successful marketing campaign, it is important for organizations to
set their SMART marketing objectives (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Marketing
objectives helps an organization to set their marketing goals that are required to be achieved by
them. So, marketing objectives are a kind of marketing strategy set that are required to be
achieved in order to achieve organizational objectives. Marketing objectives that can be set by
ALDI for their “Express Ourselves marketing campaign” are as follows:
Marketing objectives suitable for ALDI are:
 To increase overall sales of ALDI by 20 percent by the end of April, 2021.
 To enhance their overall customer base by at least 25 percent by the end of April, 2021.
 To expand their online presence and open 5 retail stores within 12 months.
ALDI is planning to launch an intense marketing campaign with a Tagline “Express
Ourselves”. They are planning to run this marketing campaign during a period of 1st May 2020 to
30th Aril 2021. It is important for ALDI to focus on setting some marketing objectives that will
be required to be achieved during this marketing campaign. ALDI has set three main marketing
objectives that are required to be achieved by them out of all the three objectives, one of the
main objective set by ALDI is to increase their overall sales by at least 20 percent by the end of
April, 2021. They will be focusing on advertising their brand, products and services though
social networking sites and organizing a campaign which will help their business to reach their
targeted population and attract more number of customers. In order to achieve these objectives
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there are various strategies that will be required to be implemented which will further help them
to achieve their desired marketing objectives which will further help them to make this
marketing campaign successful (Misirlis and Vlachopoulou, 2018). Other than increasing sales
they also have two other objectives that are required to be archived by them during this period
that are: to increase customer base by at least 25 percent, to expand their online presence and
open 5 more retail stores within 12 months. In order to achieve both the objectives it is important
for ALDI to conduct market research which will help them to analyse their current position
within the market, factors that can affect their business. Analysis of these factors will also help
them to evaluate whether their marketing campaign will be successful or will be a failure and
what are the measures that will be required by them to be achieved. One of the main advantage
of analysis of factors is that it will help them to understand and analyse places where they can
open their retail stores which will be beneficial for them to increase their overall sales. It will
also help them to understand ways in which they can increase their online presence effectively.
In order to increase their customer base, ALSI can focus on bringing changes within their current
business strategies like providing discounts, coupons, hone delivery services or by introducing
environment friendly products, services or packaging.
Marketing Mix plan for achieving desired marketing objectives over 12 moths time period
Marketing mix can be defined as a set of tactics or actions that can be used by
organizations for promotion of their products, services or brand in the market. It also helps an
organization achieve or peruse their desired marketing aims and objectives (Blut, Teller and
Floh, 2018). It is a tool which is used by organizations to understand and decide ways in which
organizations can achieve their marketing objectives, what are the measures or decisions that are
required to be taken by them for the same. Marketing mix consist of seven defined elements that
are known as 7 P’s which helps companies to achieve their set marketing objectives in a better
manner within a set or desired duration of time period. These seven marketing mix elements that
helps a company to achieve their targeted marketing goal are: product, price, place, promotion,
people, process and physical evidence. Development of 7 P’s marketing mix strategy can help
ALDI in achievement of their target marketing goal and objectives within a time period of 12
months in order to achieve their desired results within the targeted market in which they operate:
 Product: There are huge range of products that are provided by ALDI that can be used by
their customers. This increases the range or choice for their customers to choose an
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appropriate product that suits them and can be used by them to fulfil their needs and
requirements. ALDI can provide various kinds of other benefits to their customers such as
after sales service, customer care service, home delivery and various other kinds of benefits
(Datta, Ailawadi and Van Heerde, 2017). Today most of the people are becoming
environment friendly and prefer using eco-friendly products. ALDI can use it as a strategy
and can focus on introducing completely new eco-friendly product line or can focus on
bringing some changes within their packaging like using environment friendly or reusable
packaging material. This will help them to enhance their customer base and will also help
them to drive their sales to their defined target.
 Price: Pricing strategy currently used by ALDI is competitive pricing strategy. Most of the
products offered by ALDI are offered at similar or competitive price as compared to their
substitute products or competitors’ products. ALDI can focus on providing pricing benefits to
their customers which will help them to attract more customers and increase their overall
sales (Risnawati, Sumarga and Purwanto, 2019). They can provide pricing benefits such as:
discount’s, coupons, free products and many more. Other than this they can also focus on
bringing some changes within their pricing strategy with their competitive pricing strategy.
They can combine psychological and competitive pricing strategy i.e. offer products at
competitive prices but bring changes within number of digits of the prices for example: If a
product offered by them is of 10 then they should offer it to their customers in 9. This will
help ALDI to attract more number of customers and enhance their overall customer base.
 Place: ALDI sells their products through retail stores as well as online. But usage or presence
of ALDI on online channel for sales is quite low (Dolnicar, Grün and Leisch, 2018). They
can focus on enhancing their presence on online channels like on social networking sites,
their own website where their customers can directly buy products online and by providing
additional home delivery service they can boost their current customer base and increase
their sales and profit margin drastically. This will further help them to expand their business
and open 5 more retail stores within a time period of 12 months and increase their sales and
profit margin.
 Promotion: Promotional activates used by ALDI are good i.e. they promote their products
on social networking sites, televisions, advertisements and many more. They can bring
improvement within their current promotional strategy. They can opt for search engine
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optimization where their users will be able to access their products and service online easily.
This will also help them to increase their online presence, increase their customer’s
experience.
 People: ALDI has a large employee base where various kinds of employees work for them in
different location in various departments. They can focus on providing training to their
customers so that their employees can learn new skills required by them and bring
improvement within their performance (Hollensen and Opresnik, 2019). This will help ALDI
to support new additional services that they will provide to their customers such as customer
care service. As skilled employees will provide much better after service to their customers.
 Process: ALDI can use advance information system that can help them to manage their
products and services availability on both online and offline channels. This will further help
them to forecast their future sales in order to increase their sales and overall profit.
 Physical Evidence: In order to enhance their customer experience, ALDI can focus on
asking for feedback or rate their customer service that was provided to them. This will help
ALDI to bring improvement within their packaging, customer satisfaction and experience in
a much better manner.
Ways in which ALDI can bring improvement within their level of customer service as a part of
“Express Ourselves marketing campaign”
If an organization wants their business to flourish, then it is important for them to focus on
bringing improvement within their products and services in a much better manner. It is important
for an organization to focus on bringing improvement within their customer service level (Priya,
Zunke and Mitra, 2016). It will not only help the organization enhance their customer
satisfaction but it will also help them to boost marketing campaigns organized by them.
Similarly, ALDI needs to focus on their customer service level and should focus on making it a
part of their Express ourselves marketing campaign. By focusing on enhancement of their
customer service level, ALDI can focus on achieving their desired marketing objectives in a
much better manner. Not only this, it will also help them to enhance their customer base and gain
competitive advantage. It will help them to enhance their customer base, increase overall sales as
well as enhance their customer experience in a much better manner. There are various ways that
can help ALDI to bring improvement within their customer service level. Some of the most
common strategies can be used by ALDI to improve their customer service level are as follows:
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 Work on feedback provided by the customers: For a retail sector organization, one of the
most important thing is customer service (Kumar, Shankar and Aljohani, 2019). A retail
organization should focus on continuously enhancing their customers experience and
satisfaction level. Feedback provided by the customers play a vital role in it. ALDI need to
focus on feedback’s provided by the customers and should work on resolving all kinds of
issues faced by them or things that are required by the customers. After resolving customer’s
feedback, ALDI should again focus on asking for their experience related to their feedback
and should ask whether there are any kinds of suggestions that are required by them in order
to enhance their overall customer service.
 Provide training to customer service team in order to strengthen their customer service:
Another important factor which is required to be focused on in order to enhance their
customer service is working on training their employees so that they can learn and work on
new skills required by them, can provide training to them so that they can enhance their
current skill set and knowledge. This will help ALDI to develop an effective customer
service level who would be skilled enough to communicate with their customers, identify
issues faced by customers and resolve it in a more appropriate manner.
 Continuously track and monitor performance of their customer representative: Whether
training provided to the employees is effective or not can only be identified by tracking
overall performance of their customer service representatives (Van Lierop and El-Geneidy,
2016). Tracking performance can also help them to check whether appropriate level of
service is being provided to the customers or not, whether still there is some requirement to
bring improvement within their customer representatives skill set and knowledge or not.
Tracking can also help customer representative to understand whether the desired level of
service is not achieved then in such cases ALDI should focus on enhancing their customer
representative’s performances in a much better manner. This will further help ALDI to
provide excellent and quality service to their customers.
 Advance information system usage: there are various kinds of information system
software’s that can be used by organizations for various kinds of purposes. ALDI can focus
on using some of the advance level information system that can further help them to develop
advance level overall organizational standard of ALDI. This will further help ALDI to
understand their customer’s needs, requirements in a much better manner. Other than this,
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advance IS system also helps the organization to understand and track their customer’s needs,
requirements, desires and changes they want within ALDI’s current system (Razak, Nirwanto
and Triatmanto, 2016). This will help ALDI’s to maintain their relationship with their
customers in a much better and enhanced manner.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarized that in order to evaluate both internal
and external capabilities of an organization marketing Audit can be conducted. it will also help
an organization focus on enhancing their overall performance and based on this analysis they can
develop their own marketing plan. It has been analysed that in order to develop or run an
effective marketing campaign it is important for an organization to define desired marketing
objectives that are required to achieved during marketing campaign. Achievement of marketing
objectives helps an organization to understand whether the marketing campaign was a success or
a failure. Marketing mix strategy can help an organization achievement of desired marketing
objectives in a better and enhanced manner. Other than this, it has also been analysed that if an
organization wants to increase their sales and customer base then they need to focus on
enhancing services provided to their customers. There are various factors or ways that can help a
company to enhance their customer service which would further help them to increase their
customer’s satisfaction level.
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REFERENCES
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