Aldi Case Study Aldi is the common company brand name of two German multinational family-owned discount supermarket chains. It is a leading global retailer and one of the world’s largest privately owned companies with about 12,000 stores in currently 19 countries. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946, when they took over their mother's store in Essen. The business was split into two separate groups in 1960, that later became Aldi Nord, headquartered in Essen, and Aldi Süd, headquartered in Mülheim. Internationally, Aldi Nord operates in Denmark, France, the Benelux countries, Portugal, Spain and Poland, while Aldi Süd operates in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland, Australia, China, Italy, Austria and Slovenia. 

The company is mainly renowned for its simplistic approach to retailing, offering a limited assortment of great quality products at low prices, where product quality means consumer safety, health and well-being and product sustainability. Aldi stores are noted as examples of so-called no-frills stores that often display a variety of items at discount prices, specializing in staple items, such as food, beverages, toilet paper, sanitary articles, and other inexpensive household items. Many of its products are own brands, with the number of other brands usually limited to a maximum of two for a given item. Aldi mainly sells exclusively produced, custom-branded products (often very similar to and produced by major brands with brand names including Grandessa, Happy Farms, Millville, Simply Nature, and Fit & Active. In Great Britain, Aldi launched in 1990, when it opened its first store there in Stechford, Birmingham, using the wholly owned English registered company of Aldi Stores Limited. Since its first opening, it has considerably expanded, having currently almost 1000 stores and taking up 9.1% of the overall grocery market in the UK. However, Aldi sees its further expansion becoming more and more difficult due to intense competition in the retailing business from other discount stores and supermarkets. The company competes against a number of multi-national retailers, some of which are larger and have substantially greater resources and which could therefore have the ability to spend more aggressively on advertising and marketing and have more flexibility to respond to changing business and economic conditions than the company. Aldi’s major competitors include discounters such as Lidl, supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons, and numerous other small and local store operators. 

Aldi positioning around high-quality products at lowest possible prices and with a no- nonsense approach have been very successful, and Aldi has a good reputation among its customers because of the quality of its product offerings. However, the grocery sector is becoming increasingly competitive and hard to succeed in due to consolidation, changing consumer behaviors, the threat of Amazon and other discounters such as Lidl, and also due to inflation. In such an environment gaining further customer trust and building an even stronger Aldi brand, a brand that really stands out, has become of utmost importance.

Question 21a Aldi would like to further strengthen their brand image and equity in the food and grocery market in the UK. Define the management decision problem. What is an appropriate marketing research problem (its broad statement and specific components) corresponding to the management decision problem you have identified? Justify your answers. [20 points]

Question 21b What type of research design should be adopted for investigating the marketing research problem (including its specific components) and why? Please identify the different phases of the research design adopted and provide a comprehensive description of each of them.

Your answer should describe the phases of the research design, providing as many details as possible. It should explain what basic research designs (exploratory, descriptive, or causal) (in combination or alone) are and what specific research methods are used, how they are used, and why they are used. Consider such aspects as 

• justification for the inclusion of each of the research phases in your proposed research design,

 • what specific components of the marketing research problem each phase informs? What information is each phase expected to deliver?

 • Specify of what and how different research methods are used in each phase. This might include such elements as tasks involved, examples of information sources, information about respondents (and their relevant groupings), types of questions asked, and other relevant details. 

• If descriptive research is used, what would be the Six W’s of descriptive research for this project? Please justify each of the W’s. 

• If a survey is to be conducted, please identify and justify which interviewing method should be used. [60 points]