MG408 Graduate Challenge: Analyzing Business Operations at Lidl

This report provides an overview of Lidl's business operations, emphasizing the importance of various functions such as Human Resource Management, finance, and marketing. It highlights Lidl's growth since 1994, expanding to over 10,000 stores in the UK and Europe. The report details the role of HRM in recruitment, training, and skill allocation. It further examines Lidl's financial standing, including its operating margin and international sales trends from 2014 to 2018, noting a focus on profitability. The marketing section analyzes Lidl's 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), emphasizing its competitive pricing strategy. The report concludes that Lidl provides top-quality products at low prices, supported by a dedicated workforce. Desklib offers similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
Introduction
Lidl company is a UK grocery super market which is highly competitive as well as
saturated with thousands of competitors around it. Since the year 1994 Lidl have opened up more
than 10,000 stores in UK and Europe.
Role of Human Resource Management in Lidl
 Identifying the different types of roles in the organization such as buying goods and
groceries and merchandising, managing the store and other operations in business as well
as providing technological support to the business.
 The Human Resource Management is also involved in recruiting and selecting the
employee like dealing with various types of advertisements in the newspaper, recruiting
agencies, and screening resume and taking personal interviews.
 It also involves in training new staffs as well as enhancing the skills and allocating them
in various outlets of the company.
Operations of Lidl
Lidl is German based super market company, which operates over more than 10,000
stores across Europe and the United States. It was a 1930’s fruit wholesaler company, which had
later developed into a general food wholesaler company. The company generally focuses on the
discounts market, larger supermarkets. Lidl is a part of the Schwarz Group which is one of the
fifth largest retail business in the world with current sales more than $82.4 billion dollars in
2018. The Sales Operations Manager exhibits a huge number of skills and qualities like
managing the stores, innovations, team building and building relationships. The work of the

2BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
operations management team is to utilize these skills and qualities to manage as well as maintain
the performance in the stores (Butterbiggins 2019).
Financial Stage of Lidl
The operation margin of Lidl is slowing down and it has dropped to 43.% which is very
high as compared to the other competitive industries in the market. It has lowered since the year
2012. The company attributes all these lower profits in the investment of the new markets in
various different countries. According to it seems that the owner of Lidl, Schwarz Group will be
emphasizing the profitability and the financial discipline in the recent years. The total
international sales of Lidl in the last five years are given below:
Fig 1. Represents the International Sales of Lidl from the year 2014 to 2018.
(Source:Careers Lidl 2019).
FY 2015 FY 2018FY 2017FY 2016FY 2014

3BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
The Finance, Accounting as well as the Tax department is fully responsible for managing
the well being of the financial status of the company. The operations mainly includes the cash
flow control management, bank reconciliation statement, management of treasury as well as the
third party payment collections. The team is responsible for preparing the financial statement of
the company on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.
Role of Marketing Business
The role of marketing business operation is to establish the relationship between
customers and the organization, which are offered to the Lidl super markets. The
marketing function is tasked with the branding of the organization, participating in
publicity activities, advertising the brand Lidl and customer interaction through the
feedback collection (Bilińska-Reformat 2016)
4P’s Analysis of Lidl
 Product Analysis – The brand has a very strong brand name being the cheapest
selling supermarket industry. The products which are sold over here are very
cheap and similar to the other supermarket but the main difference is in the brands
and the names of the products of Lidl (Bhasin 2019).
 Price Analysis – The most advantageous thing of Lidl is their pricing strategy
which is made on the basis on the most valued supermarket in the industry.
 Place Analysis – Lidl has a variety of distribution hubs across UK and many
places in Europe where their main motto is to sell as many goods in a very less
amount of time.

4BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
 Promotion – This includes the advertisements, personal selling of the goods and
services. Lidl often has promotionsbut they do not put huge discounts in their
goods highly as because the goods are already low priced than the competition
brands in the market (GradesFixer 2019).
Conclusion
From the above analysis it can be concluded that Lidl takes pride in providing the top
quality products at a very lowest possible price to all the customers in Europe and UK. A
network of dedicated staffs helping to establish and develop the company’s success operates the
store.

5BUSINESS OPERATIONS OF LIDL
References
Bilińska-Reformat, K., 2016. The role of dynamic marketing capabilities in creation of
competitive advantage of commercial chains. Handel Wewnętrzny, (4 (363)), pp.16-24.
Bhasin, H. 2019. Marketing mix of LIDL - LIDL Marketing mix explain. [online] Marketing91.
Available at: https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-mix-of-lidl/ [Accessed 22 Mar. 2019].
Butterbiggins.lidl.co.uk. 2019. Lidl’s Operation | Lidl Butterbiggins. [online] Available at:
http://www.butterbiggins.lidl.co.uk/lidls-operation/ [Accessed 22 Mar. 2019].
Careers Lidl US. 2019. Finance, Accounting & Tax. [online] Available at:
https://careers.lidl.com/en/administration-1412.htm [Accessed 22 Mar. 2019].