Marketing Strategies Comparison

The provided document is about comparing marketing strategies between two companies. It includes information on marketing functions, roles, and responsibilities along with their interrelationship with other departments. The report also compares the marketing mix strategies between ALDI and LIDL to show differences in their marketing plans.

MARKETING ESSENTIALS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
P1 Roles and Responsibilities of marketing functions of ALDI.................................................3
P2 How roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context.......5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
P3 Compare the ways in which the ALDI applies the marketing mix........................................6
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................10
P4 Produce and evaluate a basic marketing plan ....................................................................10
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................13
Books and Journals...................................................................................................................13
........................................................................................................................................................14

INTRODUCTION
Marketing plays an important role in the business organization because this is the only
tool that can take a business on hike with a small investment of time and money. As marketing is
a tool which utilizes to identify the requirements and demand of the customers cause if the firm
knows the basic needs and requirements of the customers then only it can sustain in the
marketplace. The business organizations realizes the customer relationship that is essential to
attain a position in the market, there are various kinds of tools, techniques ans strategies which
will be covered in this report along with respect of ALDI. ALDI is one of the biggest
supermarket discount chain in the United Kingdom which is presently running over 10,000 stores
across 20 countries. It was founded in 1913 by two brothers Karl Albrecht, Theo Albrecht. The
headquarter is situated in Germany (Dibb and Simkin, 2013).
TASK 1
P1 Roles and Responsibilities of marketing functions of ALDI.
Marketing plays an important role in every organization and in ALDI it is utilizes to
recognize the potential in of the market to know that where the firm can invest more to attain
great profits. ALDI is a supermarket chain that offers grocery items to the public with a huge
discount rates, but to attract the people it is not enough to furnish a store only with discounted
products. So, in order to attain the customer satisfaction, it is required to get collect the
information in which the customers are interested and what are they purchasing from the others.
Marketing can provide the information about the products what the customers are consuming and
then the firm can provide same item with the distinguishable price along with attractive
promotional strategies. There are various marketing functions that can be include as marketing
research, preparing a marketing plan, strategies for advertisements, product development
strategies, distribution strategies for sales, customer service and maintaining public relationship.
Marketing is crucial for business organizations specially for those that are looking for the profit
and gives a new direction to rise in level of sales (Wirtz, 2012). Marketing functions has some
roles and responsibilities that are described below -
Marketing Strategies – It would be better for any organization that they first develops
strategies before just implement the actions because it can be reason of huge loss for the
company. Marketing strategies are the most impactful strategies that generates a path for to gain
profit through increasing the sales. The first and foremost state of marketing function is to
identification of the customer’s needs and requirement because there are so many customers who
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has specific needs and they would like to spend their money on the priorities first. If the firm is
producing such things that are genuinely required by the customers, then for sure the company
can go so far. But in case the firm is not doing so, then it will be beneficial for them to produce
the things according to the market needs that can generate the sales. ALDI needs to develop such
kind of strategies that are beneficial for both sides that is for the company and buyers as well.
Because without the buying decision the company cannot raise its sales and to improve the sales
its needed to be focused on the targeted customer preferences (Pike, 2015). Marketing strategies
are established to attain the objectives of the company.
Management information system – Management information system or MIS is a
collection of statistical data that is used to gather the information about the entire procedure of
product development. It contains the information about each stage of product from the planning,
implementation and controlling. The MIS refers as a documentation of the product because it
contains the information about the production of certain items and the materials which are
required to develop such goods. It is good if ALDI would apply the MIS because it will support
to achieve the objectives and goals. MIS is a documented record with statistics to control the
process of company.
Monitor the market – Every firm wanted to go higher with the time but for this it needs
to monitor the market trends. The firms needs to improve it products and services to capture the
attention of customers in the market because there are so many changes that are capturing in the
market. It is necessary to monitor the competitors to change the strategies and nature of product
and services. The changes can be socio – economic factors, internal and external changes,
political and legal changes in the marketplace. Monitoring of the market is essential in order to
be aware about the changing trends to implement the new strategies that can derive profit to the
firm.
Marketing research - The marketing research is crucial cause it provides a deep down
inside the information which requires to develop a product and offer that in the marketplace. The
research has an aim to know the requirement and needs of the customers with various elements.
The customer satisfaction is the the main objective of the company to make the customers happy
it is required to research on the customer's needs that can also give economic contentment to the
firm and consumer both (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011). Marketing research is conduct to
know the needs and demands of the people that can satisfy them.
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Market segmentation – Marketing segmentation refers to study about consumers on the
basis of customer's requirements where the business is getting established . There are three
marketing segmentation techniques that used to gather the information on specific nature and
characteristics of the people. There are demographic, geographic, behavioural, and
psychographic segmentation that uses to conduct research on these to encourage the sales.
Marketing segmentation is crucial to recognize the needs of the population according to the
nature and their lifestyle.
Brand image – Creating a brand image is the biggest task for the marketing, it use to
build a brand image by promotional activities like advertisement through various mediums. An
ethical publicity is good for establishing an image among prospected customers. ALDI has a
good brand image among its customers and that is because of its ethical publicity (Berkowitz,
2016). Creating a brand image is one of the major responsibility of marketing team with a
goodwill that can appeal the people.
Hence, marketing plays a vital role in developing strategies that leads to enhance the
profitability of organisation. There is MIS documents that covers entire information about the
customers that helps in provide information about upcoming plan of the company. Marketing
targets its potential users through segmentation on the basis of demographics and geographic
locations. These functions also supports to create a brand image of the firm that is also assisted
by various promotional activities.
P2 How roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context.
There are several other departments of the organization which are interrelated to with
marketing because they also plays an important role to accomplish the goals. These sections are
supporting to produce the opportunities to explore a company with achieving the high results.
The interrelation of the marketing with other section can be mentioned as below -
Human resource management – The human resource management retries the
information from marketing department about the staff recruitment. The HR manager of the
ALDI can recruit the staff for marketing and sales through various recruitment strategies.
Research and development – The marketing team put a research and development
department to analyse the market requirement. The marketing department closely related to the
people because they are the main source of the information and the data collected from them will
be define the information what actually support goods and services in that particular region
where the ALDI is opening its store.
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Manufacturing process – The manufacturing process is closely related to the marketing
because the marketing team provides the information about the flow of goods and services in the
marketing. When marketing team observe that there is a requirement of goods then it will tell the
manufacturing department and then that will manufacture the goods to supply in the market. The
marketing team of ALDI will provide the information to the manufacturing department because
after that they can start the production and that will also reduce the overflow of production.
Finance department – There are so many activities for marketing that needs some
investment and that finance is provided by the finance department. ALDI finance department can
ask for the investment area where the marketing section wanted to spend the money and after
that the finance department keep the account of marketing team and then it will assign the
required amount (Perreault, 2010).
Information and communication technology – There are so many technologies are
evolving in everyday life yet the technology is also important for the business perspective.
Information and communication technology or the ICT is one of the main source to promote the
products. Marketing department of ALDI utilizes the ICT in order to increase the sales, it can use
its customer information to inform them about the upcoming discount schemes or the new range
of goods. It uses the technology in distributing the information through newsletter, emails,
messages, etc (Jones and Rowley, 2011).
Administration – The administration is the highest authority of any business
organisation that has decision power and implement the new planning and strategies. The
administration can be the Chief Executive Officer of the ALDI that has the rights to take the
decision and also establishing the rules for governance along with approval rights. The all rights
are reserved with the administration until this will not sanction the marketing budget or any other
marketing plan or strategies the marketing department cannot withdraw budget amount and also
not able to implement any plan or strategies. The marketing team needs to take the approval from
the administration department.
Consumer service – The consumer service department is closely related to the customers
because if they face any problem with the purchased product then they can call to the customer
service department where they can find the solutions regarding their issues. This information will
be fetch by the marketing department and then it can be analysing that what kind of problems
customers are actually facing to what are the ways from which the issues can be overcome. It
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will help to ALDI to provide better products that can be useful and satisfy the needs of customers
and economic benefits to the company (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2012).
TASK 3
P3 Compare the ways in which the ALDI applies the marketing mix
Marketing is a concept that encourage a business to make the profit through sales. After
all business is always hunting for a way that can improve the sales and that is what marketing is
all about. It implements the strategies to increase business at proper place where there is a
requirement of the product and at the exact time when it needed the most so that people can
easily access the store and its products. There are 7Ps in marketing mix that explores the more
opportunities to develop a strong business with the customers. Marketing mix is applied in
various organizations to show that impact on the different organizations below is comparison
between the ALDI and LIDL which defines the marketing plan with marketing mix -
Marketing mix ALDI LIDL
Product ALDI sell the similar product
like other brands. It provides
products from the selected
suppliers with affordable
prices. The main product of
the firm is food and along with
this it also offers some
products like vegetables, fruits,
health and beauty products,
clothes, stationary, electronic
products, household goods and
soft tools. It is also known as
the largest retailer of wine in
Germany. Along with all of
these products this ALDI has
almost 1350 variety of
products in different stores.
LIDL offers huge range of
products with a commitment of
good quality and it also source
the products from the local
farmers. The seventy percent
of products are supplied by the
British farmers and suppliers
to maintain the freshness and
quality of the edible products.
It offers almost all kind of
grocery items with effective
quality like food items,
clothing, baby products, fruits,
vegetables, etc (Mihart, 2012).
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Price ALDI has a strong customer
bond because of its cheap price
and quality that it is
maintaining from years. It has
specific products and that are
not available at competitor’s
stores. It has several pricing
structures like unit pricing
strategies so that people can
easily compare the similar
product with the other brands.
. Market penetration price a
low price to successfully enter
in the market. It uses different
kind of pricing strategies so
that customers can compare it
with others and analyse the
quality of the product.
It uses penetration pricing
method to enter a product
introduce a product in the
market with the low price that
can encourage the sales. It has
so many products with private
labels that eliminates the
middles man cost that's why it
can easily sustain with its low-
cost products (Desai, 2013).
LIDL sells its own products for
the profit margins more than
the national brands cause it
increase its profit more than
investments. It sells its
products on low cost so that
people can easily attract
towards its price and enhance
purchasing behaviour.
Promotion ALDI has quite interesting
promotional activities it
encompasses the cost – saving
strategy because it spends
negligible amount on
promotional activities and
even it does not hold any
marketing department at
headquarter. It has its own
style of promotion which
includes 'Super Buys' offers.
The super buys remains till the
last stocks and it changes
LIDL follows the integrated
promotional campaigns that
plays on TV throughout the
year. Even it also has a 'Lidl
app' for the iPhone and
Android users so that they can
reach towards the customers. It
also has some weekly offers
which aid to save the twenty-
five on goods (Nguyen and
Simkin, 2012).
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every week. It provides
information through using ICT
that means it sends the
information to its customer
from newsletter, emails and
messages. In the US, UK and
Australia it use the print,
electronic and display media to
promote the sales along with
this it use as swap and save to
enable the customer’s to
switch the brand they were
using (Lane, 2016).
Place ALDI is chain and it has more
than 8000 stores in almost 18
countries and it opens a new
store in Britain every week.
The store layout is very simple
instead of investing in layout it
expenses in the products that is
beneficial for customer and
their satisfaction. It is
purchases many products in
bulk and keep them safe in
warehouse with quality
assurance. It ensures the
minimum wastage to control
the environment harm. It tries
to appear in the regional area
of every country that's why it
keep the name of the stores
according to their local
The firm has various regional
distribution centres to delivers
the quality products at the
stores. The customers can
purchase the products from
any store in the UK, USA
(Swenson, Rhoads and
Whitlark, 2014).
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presence.
People ALDI has thoughtful and well-
designed sections on each
floor that reduces the
workforce requirement that
needed to assist the customers.
There are employees at billing
counter they are quick in scan
and billing the goods.
The staff get the high amount
of salary and they are highly
trained in give fast services
like scanning the items. The
employees work hard to meet
the expectations of the
customers (Hsu, 2011).
Process ALDI can make its product
finding very easy for the
customer through its fierce
layout, so that customer can
select their wishes of products
that reduces the number of
customer services that are
needed to assist the customers.
It keeps only a few high-
quality products on low cost to
prevent the customer from
getting confused. The all
products has large barcodes
that makes easy the
identification process of items
at the bill counter.
It provides the self-checkouts
to allow customers the fast
services and it reduces the long
queues and it also improves the
customer's interaction with the
staff (Kennedy and Parsons,
2014).
Physical evidence ALDI is renowned name for its
easy and simple business
process, standard and pricing
system which remains same in
all the stores across countries.
Approximately 85% products
The LIDL keeps its store
colour in yellow and blue so
the people who are looking for
the brand can easily access the
nearby stores (Dibb and
Simkin, 2013).
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are its home brands and the
rest 15 % are acquired by the
recognized brands.
TASK 4
P4 Produce and evaluate a basic marketing plan
Marketing plan is blue print of the activities how well a company can attain the
objectives and goals. It is a documentation about the strategies and other activities that gives new
direction to the company. ALDI can structure its marketing plan as follows -
Executive summary – ALDI can establish a new plan in which the existing problems
can be demolish or reduced. There are some new techniques and tools that can give growth to the
company which can be derive from the previous performance (Wirtz, 2012).The plan includes
the specific target of the market to attain the company's objectives with different activities which
comprises the marketing expenses. It needs to recognize the internal factors of the company so
that it can proceed for the further activities.
Company overview – The firm established to offer various kinds of products with
unique quality. It is offering food, beverages, sanitary, articles and households, etc. It offers
almost 10366 locations.
Objectives – A business came in inception with an objective to provide quality products
on affordable price and discount that can reach to the people easily and can give the satisfaction
to them (Pike, 2015).
Mission and vision – ALDI mission is to provide quality assured products to the public.
The vision is that to spread the business across the boundary.
Segmentation – There are various marketing segmentation on which the research is
conducted to analyse the market needs and requirements in order to attain the profit because it
gives the clear picture of prospect customers.
Targeting – The targeted customers are those who stays in an area where the store is
going to open, the major focused group is the woman who take cares the house so it can provide
the household products as its core focused target. after the segmentation the next step is to grab
the targeted customers.
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Marketing situational analysis – The market depends on some specific situations of the
market and that is known as macro and micro analysis. The micro analysis define the internal
analysis of a ALDI that defines the actual internal strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
of the company (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, 2011).
Strength
 ALDI serves top quality products.
 Affordable prices.
 Strong presence across the world.
 Operating cost is low.
 It acquires almost 8000 stores on
international level.
Weaknesses
 Still a small brand in comparison of
other retail brands.
 Global impact is low due to the
existence of other giants.
 It assumes to be low quality products
because of cheap prices.
Opportunities
 They can also expand the business in
such countries that has large population
like China and India. It will give a push
to increase firm's business in the large
regions.
 It can expand in developing economies
like Africa, Asia, etc.
Threats
 One of the major threat is the suppliers
risk.
 Private label brands can take a gap
among the established brands.
Porter's Five Force Model
 Competitive rivalry – There are so many leading supermarkets that offers the same price
of the products. Price competition is the most fierce competition.
 Threats of new entrants – When a products come to the market for the first time then they
have a fear of sell their products and ALDI increase purchases vegetables, fruits, etc
from the farmers to take up the small and medium sized market.
 Bargaining power of suppliers – The retail industry has so many suppliers for the same
products with less price. The retailers can push them for discount price but suppliers has
more option to supply their products that's why they have high bargaining power.
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 Bargaining powers of buyers – The customers always looking for the least cost of the
products so when they find less products for their desired product then they can switch
the brand. They buyers have high bargaining power regarding their cost capacity.
 Threats of substitute- There are so many brands which are also offering the same
products like ALDI so the goods sold by the company can also be purchased by other
company.
Budget information – Funds are needed to spend on various activities and that are as
follows -
Marketing budget
Particulars 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year 5th year
Initial money 8000 9000 11000 11000 21000
Investment 11000 800 15000 15000
Total 8000 20000 11800 21000 36000
Marketing outlay
Promotion 6000 2200 1200 3000 1200
Sales publicity 1000 2100 1500 2000 3000
Direct selling 4000 2000 5000 5000 3000
Total 12000 6300 7700 10000 7200
CONCLUSION
The above report is about the marketing, it includes the information that about the roles and
responsibilities of marketing functions along with the interrelationship with other departments. It
compares the marketing mix strategies between the ALDI and LIDL to show the difference in
marketing plan and a marketing plan of ALDI.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Dibb, S. and Simkin, L., 2013. Marketing essentials. Cengage Learning.
Wirtz, J., 2012. Essentials of services marketing. FT Press.
Pike, S., 2015. Destination Marketing: Essentials. Routledge.
Lamb, C.W., Hair, J.F. and McDaniel, C., 2011. Essentials of marketing. Cengage Learning.
Berkowitz, E.N., 2016. Essentials of health care marketing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Perreault, W.D., 2010. Essentials of marketing: A marketing strategy planning approach.
Jones, R. and Rowley, J., 2011. Entrepreneurial marketing in small businesses: A conceptual
exploration. International Small Business Journal. 29(1). pp.25-36.
Papasolomou, I. and Melanthiou, Y., 2012. Social media: Marketing public relations’ new best
friend. Journal of Promotion Management. 18(3). pp.319-328.
Mihart, C., 2012. Impact of integrated marketing communication on consumer behaviour: effects
on consumer decision–making process. International Journal of Marketing Studies. 4(2).
p.121.
Desai, S.S., 2013. An analysis of the competitive marketing strategies of the hospitality industry
in UAE. IUP Journal of Management Research. 12(1). p.22.
Nguyen, B. and Simkin, L., 2012. Fairness quality: the role of fairness in a social and ethically
oriented marketing landscape. The Marketing Review. 12(4). pp.333-344.
Lane, P., 2016. Human resources marketing and recruiting: essentials of employer branding.
Handbook of Human Resources Management, pp.23-52.
Swenson, M.J., Rhoads, G.K. and Whitlark, D.B., 2014. Startup marketing: Leveraging leverage.
The Journal of Applied Business and Economics. 16(6). p.56.
Hsu, W., 2011. The vocabulary thresholds of business textbooks and business research articles
for EFL learners. English for Specific Purposes. 30(4). pp.247-257.
Kennedy, A.M. and Parsons, A., 2014. Social engineering and social marketing: why is one
“good” and the other “bad”?. Journal of Social Marketing. 4(3). pp.198-209.
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