Company Report for ALDI: Business Performance Review

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of ALDI, a prominent supermarket chain operating in the retail sector. It begins with an introduction to the retail industry, highlighting its growth and the factors driving its expansion. The report then delves into ALDI's background, including its history, global presence, and target customers. It identifies customer service and the offering of affordable, high-quality products as key strengths, emphasizing ALDI's fast scanning processes, product packaging, and flexible exchange policies. Conversely, the report critiques ALDI's employee retention issues, citing high turnover rates and negative employee reviews. The conclusion recommends strategies to improve employee satisfaction and retention, such as increasing salaries, implementing flexible work policies, and introducing employee engagement programs. The report concludes that ALDI should focus on addressing employee concerns to maintain its position in the competitive retail market.

Running Head: COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
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1COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
1. Introduction of the industry:
ALDI operates in the retail sector. Retail sector is a one of the flourishing industries in the
global economy which offers customers varieties of products ranging from food, grocery items,
and apparel to furniture and jewelries; in the form of convenience stores, internet retailing, and
specialty retailer (Verhoef, Kannan and Inman, 2015).The convenience, premium quality
services, that retail sector provides to its customers; attracts young people, especially millenials.
This results into a boost in the overall demand for retail services, in the global economy. In order
to adjust the supply with the demand retail companies are setting their prices at a higher level.
This is facilitating retail companies to incur more profits. In the year 2017, the revenue generated
from retail sector, in the global economy was valued at USD 23,460. During the forecast period
2019 - 2023, the total revenue from the industry is expected to reach USD 31,880.8 billion
(Deloitte.com, 2019). Again, the opportunity to grab a huge profit, paves the way for more retail
companies to enter the global market which is adding to the expansion of the retail sectors all
over the world.
2. Introduction of the company:
ALDI is popular supermarket chain based in Germany (Aldi.com, 2019). The headquarter
of ALDI is in Essen. Since its foundation by two German brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht, in
the year 1946, ALDI has become able to expand its business all over the world. Currently ALDI
possesses over 10,000 stores situated in 20 countries across the world (Aldi.com, 2019). ALDI
stores all over the world offer the customers natural grocery items, wine. Millennial families and
people living in urban areas are the targeted customers to ALDI. Other Supermarket chains

2COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
offering preserve foods as well as grocery items are the competitors of ALDI. ALDI offers
premium quality foods and grocery items at a pocket-friendly budget. The preserved foods and
grocery items are tested in the laboratory twice, before they are distributed to the supermarket
chains all over the world. ALDI is also popular for providing fast services to the customers and
managing store and inventory in a systematic manner. These are the features for which ALDI is
able to stand out in the crowed of rivals, the reflection of which can be found from the statistics
the growth of sales rate of ALDI (Britain).

3COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
Source: winners among retailers in terms of sales rate (Britain) (BBC News, 2019).
2.1 One aspect the Company excels at:
Customer service is the other aspect in which ALDI excels. ALDI puts a lot of efforts to
create convenience for the customers. Firstly, ALDI shows that they values the precious time of
their customers. They do not want their customers to wait in the long queues in front of the
counter after they have collected desired items. This also reflected in the initiatives taken by
ALDI to facilitate fast scanning (Aldi.com, 2019). An ALDI product contains barcodes on its 5
or 6 sides (Aldi.com, 2019). As barcodes are attached on multiple sides of the packets, at the
time of scanning there is no need to turn the product again and again. This saves time taken to
scan a product. Secondly, ALDI is well known Apart from providing minute details of the
product related information through attractive packaging, ALDI also make provision for the
variation in the design of the packaging, so that products which look similar can easily be
distinguished with each other (Aldi.com, 2019). For example, due to a huge similarity customers
may become confused between Blueberry as well as blackberry yogurts. In this case, ALDI
facilitate the identification of those two products by making the colors of the lids different for
each of them (Aldi.com, 2019). Thirdly at the ALDI make provision for an affordable shopping.
For example, people need to deposit a quarter for a cart. Fourthly, the exchange system at ALDI
is very flexible and does not consist of any hidden cost. For example, if a customer has not
received 100% satisfaction after a purchase, then the company makes provision for exchange
offers or refunds. The customers do not have to bear the burden of any hidden cost while
returning the product (Aldi.com, 2019).

4COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
2.1 Another aspect the company excels at:
ALDI is one of the supermarket chains of this world that sells organic or natural grocery
products at an affordable price. Majority of the products sold in ALDI stores are exclusively
brand products are tested twice in the laboratory as well as kitchen owned by ALDI. Thus, the
products sold at ALDI stores provide ‘double’ assurance to the customers (Aldi.com, 2019). In
other words, ALDI provides premium quality grocery products made of natural extracts, to the
customers, at a lower price compared to the other natural products offered by rival supermarket
chains – Waitrose, M&S, Wallmart. This is one of the aspects at which the company exhibited
excels.
2.3 One aspect that the company criticized for:
The aspect for which ALDI has been criticized is employee retention. Nearly 2000
employees have provided negative reviews about the treatment of the management to the
employees at ALDI in the year 2018 (Corporate.aldi.us, 2019). Again, the social media posts of
the employees who had left jobs at ALDI, revealed that the value of the pay, benefits becomes
diluted due to the excessive work pressure. The heavy work load does not allow them to balance
professional life and personal life. This in turn hammers the job satisfaction of the employees
(Corporate.aldi.us, 2019). In this context the negative impacts of the substantially high rate of
employee turnover on the business conducted by ALDI, can be mentioned (Bode, Singh and
Rogan, 2015). A high employee turnover rate cast upon a negative influence on the revenue as
well as profits of ALDI (At the time of recruiting people ALDI has to bear the hiring expenses,
the cost of training employees. Now, if a major section of the employee leaves ALDI, the
company does not only suffer from low productivity, but also the investment made by the
company to hire as well as train employees, goes in vain (Akinyomi, 2016).

5COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
3. Conclusion and Recommendations:
There are several initiatives that ALDI can take in order to retain employees and reduce
employee turnover rates. More than 30% of the storekeepers of ALDI are underpaid. This
indicates that the company needs to increase the salary slabs, so that employees realize that their
dedication is valued . Secondly, the company should adopt flexible policies regarding leaves,
promotion, benefits and employee engagement programs. For example, ALDI should change the
policy of unpaid overtime as well as unpaid sick leaves. If employees are allowed paid sick
leaves and paid overtime, they will be encouraged to be devoted to the company and increase
their productivity. This will in turn accelerate the overall growth of ALDI. The introduction of
employee engagement programs like- arranging indoor games as well as contests in which
employees may win attractive prizes, arrangement of yearly function parties, making provision
for annual trips, can also be considered as the alternatives to relieve the stress of the employees.
Increasing employee benefits will also be effective to retain talents in the company. For
example- Providing-subsidizing the medical treatments of the employees, introducing pension
for retired employees will evoke the interest of the employees to serve the company for long
time. Again, making provision for promotion of senior employees, will act as motivation booster
and they will feel engaged with the work environment of ALDI.
Hence, it can be concluded that, ALDI should not only focus on the enhancement of the
quality of the products as well as services offered to the customers. It should be concerned about
the severe employee turnover issues, which it is facing at present. Employees are the
indifferentiable parts of the company. It is the ceaseless efforts of the employees that have drive
ALDI towards growth and maturity. In order to retain its position among the top 5 supermarket
chains of the world, ALDI should conduct surveys and personal interviews, so that the all the

6COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
reasons behind the dissatisfaction of employees are revealed and the company is able to decrease
employee turnover rates by designing a concrete employee retention program.

7COMPANY REPORT FOR ALDI
References:
Akinyomi, O.J., 2016. Labour turnover: Causes, consequences and prevention. Fountain
University Journal of Management and Social Sciences, 5(1), pp.105-112.
Aldi.com, 2019. Welcome To ALDI. [online] Aldi.com. Available at: <https://www.aldi.com/>
[Accessed 14 September 2019].
BBC News, 2019. Christmas Retail Winners And Losers. [online] BBC News. Available at:
<https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46801318> [Accessed 14 September 2019].
Bode, C., Singh, J. and Rogan, M., 2015. Corporate social initiatives and employee
retention. Organization Science, 26(6), pp.1702-1720.
Corporate.aldi.us, 2019. Retention | ALDI US. [online] Corporate.aldi.us. Available at:
<https://corporate.aldi.us/en/corporate-responsibility/our-people/retention/> [Accessed 12
September 2019].
Deloitte.com, 2019. Global Powers Of Retailing | Deloitte | Consumer Business Industry
Reports. [online] Deloitte. Available at: <https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/consumer-
business/articles/global-powers-of-retailing.html> [Accessed 12 September 2019].
Verhoef, P.C., Kannan, P.K. and 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),
pp.174-181.