Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction...................................................................................................................................1
1.1 background of the company......................................................................................................2
2.0 Task 1.............................................................................................................................................2
2.1 Marketing Audit........................................................................................................................2
2.2 TWOS Analysis..........................................................................................................................3
2.2.1 TWOS analysis for Aldi......................................................................................................4
3.0 Task 2.............................................................................................................................................6
3.1 Marketing Objective..................................................................................................................6
3.2 Marketing Objectives for Aldi..................................................................................................7
4.0 Task 3.............................................................................................................................................9
4.1 Marketing Mix...........................................................................................................................9
5.0 Task 4...........................................................................................................................................11
5.1 Customer service......................................................................................................................11
5.2 Recommendations for improvement of customer service for Aldi.......................................11
6.0 Conclusion....................................................................................................................................12
7.0 References....................................................................................................................................12

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1.0 Introduction
Marketing is the core function of any business. Marketing ensure the survival and growth of
any business. Therefore, companies require a special attention in designing its marketing
campaign with a true and realistic marketing objective. However, this study Extensively
focus on the marketing plan in a real of context. In order to achieve that objectives this study
intentionally choose Aldi a supermarket giant in the world. This study also focusses on the
marketing audit and marketing mix along with the applications of these two concepts from
the perspective of Aldi.

1.1 background of the company

Aldi is a popular name in supermarket industry, originally started its journey in 1913. It was
actually a family business established by Anna Albrecht. In 1946 this family shop owned by
Anna Albrecht’s sons Karl and Theo Albrecht (Tyler, 2018). Aldi actually is the short form
of Albrecht’s discount shop. This shop first launched in Essen in Germany. Currently Aldi
operating in more than 20 countries. It has biggest market share in USA and UK. In USA
Aldi is the third largest supermarkets having more than 1600 shops in different locations.
Besides USA, Aldi also operating successfully in UK having more than 7% market share in
retail chain industry(www.statista.com, 2020). It has more than 750 outlets in UK. Aldi has a
wide range of product variety including foods, staples, fashion and lifestyle, and home
essentials etc. Aldi is basically popular for its discount policy. Aldi’s core principles of doing
business is to be fair and honest. Aldi maintain a good relationship with the stakeholders
irrespective of customers, suppliers and government regulatory authorities. Many of believe
that, the current success of Aldi relies on its core principles of doing business. In spite of
having fierce competition in the UK supermarket industry Aldi is gradually improving its
market share through superior customer value and services.

2.0 Task 1
2.1 Marketing Audit
 What is marketing Audit?
Marketing audit is actually a systematic process of ascertaining market information in
relation with the company. Broadly, Marketing Audit can be defined as the systematic
process by which a company get a comprehensive idea about the overall market situation
including potential opportunities, possible threats, customers perceptions, and changes of
customer preferences etc.(Al Fahad et al., 2015). This idea is very much helpful for the

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marketer in order to developing the company’s marketing mix and other strategies to capture
the market.

 Why is marketing Audit important for business?

Marketing audit is significantly influencing the company’s marketing decisions. Marketing

audit is important form different point of view.

 Marketing audit provides significant information about the market.

 It is essential to get an idea about the current marketing environment.
 Marketing audit not only helps to understand the external marketing
environment but also helps to get idea about the current internal conditions of
the market.
 Marketing audit is very helpful to identify changing needs of the customers.
 Marketing audit enables the marketers to adopt new marketing strategies.
 Tools of marketing Audit

There are several tools widely used for marketing Audit. These tools include SWOT analysis,
PEST analysis, and Five forces analysis.

 SWOT analysis: Among the various audit tools SWOT is a very popular
framework used by the business organizations to identify the internal strength
and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats (Lumpkin and Eisner,
2008).
 PEST analysis: This tool is feasible for analyzing the general business
environment. PEST is used to analyze the political, economic, socio-cultural, and
legal environment within which a firm is operated (Lumpkin and Eisner, 2008).
 Five forces analysis: five forces consist with the forces like, new entrants,
existing competitors, suppliers, buyers, and substitute product and services.
These five forces developed by Michael E. Porters to analyze the competitive
situation of any industry.

2.2 TWOS Analysis

TWOS analysis is the most popular tools for identifying Threats, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
and strengths. Among the four elements the opportunities and threats originated from the
external environment of the firm whereas Strength and Weaknesses are originated from the
internal environment. TWOS is popularly known as SWOT.

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TWOS is a two into two matrixes. This matrix is used in business for analyzing the both
internal and external environment of the firm.

 This matrix shows the possible threats that a company face due to change in the
environment.
 Besides threats it also enables the businesses to identify the available opportunity in
the market.
 This tool is used to develop the optimum strategies to capture the available
opportunities.
 Marketers used TWOS matrix reduce the threats by using the strength of the
organization.
 It is used to identify the internal drawbacks of the organization and to develop the
strategies to minimize the drawbacks of the organization.

2.2.1 TWOS analysis for Aldi

Among the various popular brand in the retail industry Aldi is one of them. There are a lot of
positive factors helps Aldi to reach in its current position. However, in spite of being a
popular brand it has some limitations. Moreover, due everchanging environment Aldi has to
face different threats in the industry.

T W

O S
Threats (T) of Aldi:

The major threats of Aldi include followings

Competition among the retail industry is growing due to easy access of new
competitors.

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 Market is already saturated in UK.
Tightening the government rules and regulations for food safety and consumptions.
Customer preferences are changing drastically.
Rivals of Aldi are comparatively strong in terms of brand image and market share.
For example, TESCO, Sainsbury, Asda, and Zara etc.
Competitors offering superior quality with lowest price.

Weaknesses (W) of Aldi:

Weaknesses are the drawbacks or the factors where the firm is leg behind. Aldi has the
following limitations which hinder its performance greatly.

Low margin: Aldi has a low profit margin in its product due to high discount pricing.
Employee dissatisfaction: The employees of Aldi are dissatisfied due to law wages
and salaries. Aldi cannot increase the wages of salary because if they increase salaries
it will further raise the cost of product and services.
Lack of promotional effort: Aldi is very weak in developing appropriate
promotional measures to capture the new customers.
Failed to attract high income group: Aldi is specially tailored their marketing
strategy to pull the lowest income group customers. Therefore, Aldi is deprived from
the share of a higher income group customers.

Opportunities (O) of Aldi:

As a biggest and renowned firm Aldi can exploit the following opportunities in the retail
industry.

Biggest market in UK.

Opportunity to capture the market outside the European country.
Opportunity to capture the new customers by diversifying the product line.
Aldi can use internet technology such as social media to boost up its sales and
increase brand awareness.
Aldi can capture the new customers by taking different promotional campaign.

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 It can bring some changes and innovation by focusing on the changing requirements
of the customers.

Strengths (S) of Aldi:

Popular brand in the supermarket or retail industry.

Attractive to customer for its discount prices.
Wide range of product categories.
Reputation for customer services.
Having strong customer loyalty.
Excellent product mix including more than 25% of groceries items.
Strong network with the wide range of suppliers.
Aldi has a reputation for its strong sense of responsibility towards customers,
community and environment.

3.0 Task 2
3.1 Marketing Objective
Marketing objective is the intended or desired goal of marketer while they promoting their
products and services to the target customers. Marketing objective state a marketer what he or
she actually want to achieve for particular marketing campaign. Marketing objective sets an
expectation to the marketers which enables them for striving hard to achieve that goal or
objective.

Marketing objective is a must for any kinds marketing plan. It is important for business
because of the following reasons.

 Marketing objective set a standard in front of the marketer to achieve this.

 It forces the members of the organization to achieve it.
 It helps people to move in a right direction.
 Marketing objective is useful for achieving the overall objectives of the organization.
 It helps marketers to design their promotional measures for achieving the objective.
 SMART principles

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SMART is a popular framework which describe the essential attributes of organizational or
marketing goals. SMART framework states that a goal must fulfill the criteria of specific,
measurable, achievable, realistic and time frame(MacLeod, 2012).

 Specific: this criteria states that what exactly the marketing campaign wants to
achieve?
 Measurable: it indicates a parameter or yardstick by which the progress of the goals
can be measured.
 Achievable: This criterion says that objective must be achievable. Anything which is
impossible to achieve cannot be an objective.
 Realistic: realistic means objective that can be converted into reality should be
included.
 Time frame: there must be well defined time frame within which an objective will be
accomplished.
 Why objective should be SMART?

An objective should be SMART because a SMART objective is not vague. It provides a

clear-cut message about the intended objectives that an organization want to achieve. Besides
this, Objectives prepared based on the SMART framework will guided the organization in a
specific direction (Lumpkin and Eisner, 2008). Moreover, the progress of the objectives or
result can be measured if the objective is prepared based on the SMART principles. SMART
objective considers the time frame for which the objective of the organization is achieved
within a definite time period.

3.2 Marketing Objectives for Aldi

Aldi is going to launch a new marketing campaign with a tagline of “express ourselves”. This
marketing campaign must be rationale to fulfill the desired marketing objective because any
kinds of marketing campaign is launch for achieving some objectives. Therefore, Aldi must
specify the objectives of its current marketing campaign “Express ourselves”. Moreover, the
objectives of the campaign should be prepared based on the SMART framework.

The tagline of the current marketing campaign of Aldi implies that with express ourselves
Aldi actually expose itself to the more customers including new and potential customers.
Therefore, the SMART objective of current marketing campaign of Aldi as follows.

Objective-1: Increase the current market share 1% by this year.

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 Aldi’s ‘Express ourselves’ campaign intends to focus on increasing the number of customers
served. In order to achieve the growth in revenue and profitability the current marketing
campaign should be more concentrated on increasing the market share because the net
profitability will not increase unless it increases the market share. Therefore, the first
objective of “Express Ourselves” campaign is to increase the current market share by 1%
throughout the 12-month marketing campaign. It is also worth mentioned that the current
market share of Aldi is 7% in UK market. So, this campaign aimed at increasing market share
to 8% this year.

Objective-2: Increasing customer engagement by 25% with brand Aldi.

The number of customers will increase if Aldi can increase the customer engagement through
promotional measures in both offline and online. The more the customer engagement with a
particular brand the greater possibility of potential customer to become an actual customer.
Therefore, the “Express Ourselves” campaign will take different promotional and advertising
measures to increase the customer engagement with Aldi.

Objective-3: increasing the revenue 10% and overall profitability 5% by this year.

The overall profitability is the direct result of Revenue. Aldi cannot increase the profitability
unless it increases the revenue. The revenue can be increased only when Aldi can increase the
number of market share. Similarly, profitability can be increased only when it increases the
revenue. So, Express Ourselves campaign is intended to increase the net revenue 10% and
profitability 5% by this year.

Table-1: Objectives of Express Ourselves Campaign under SMART framework

May- Nov- Feb-

Steps taken to achieve the Aug-Oct Time
Objectives July Jan Apr
objectives 2020 frame
2020 2021 2021
Media Advertisement        
Objective-1 Promotional measures        
Boost up online sales        
1 May
Branding through advertisement       2020 to 30
Increasing the richness of April 2021
Objective-2 advertisement      
Spending more on social media
advertisement        

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 Measures how much customers
have been viewed the promotional
measure taken by Aldi    
Continuous interactivity with
customer        
Objetive-3 Provide superior customer support        
Investing on online platforms to
increase online sales        

4.0 Task 3
4.1 Marketing Mix
What is marketing mix?
Marketing mix is a comprehensive technique of a company especially designed to capture the
target market. It is a competitive weapon of the marketer whereby marketer design its
product, price, distribution, and promotional strategy in such a way so that it could defeat its
rivals and achieve the desired goal (Baines et al., 2017).

Why is marketing mix used in Business?

Designing marketing mix is an important task for a marketer because marketing mix creates
the basic ground for competition in the market (Pour et al., 2013). Every elements of
marketing mix works as a competitive weapon in the market. It helps companies to take
optimum decisions regarding its product quality, product design, pricing, distribution
channel, and promotional measures. Companies should use marketing mix to capture its
target market. Marketing mix helps to generate more revenue and profit. Moreover, designing
a good marketing mix helps companies to outperform than its competitor.

Marketing Mix of Aldi

As a renowned retail chain stores Aldi has designed its marketing mix in a very sophisticated
manner. It gives equal focus on its product, price, distribution and promotional measures.
However, this section endeavors to demonstrate the actual scenario of for marketing mix of
Aldi.

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 4 P’s

 Product: Product is the key marketing mix element. Product creates primary basis of
competition. Kotler argued that anything that could satisfy the needs of customer would
be a product (Armstrong et al., 2014). However, product mix include product variety,
design, product quality etc.
Aldi has a wide variety of product line as since Aldi is retail chain store. As a retail store
Aldi gathered different types of products in its outlets from different manufacturer. The
product line includes grocery, fashion, foods, clothing, and home appliances. Among the
different categories of product Aldi has more than 25% grocery items.
 Price: Pricing is the most important marketing mix decision because how much a product
will be sold depends on its price (Wilson and Gilligan, 2012). Actually, price attract those
customers who are price sensitive. Pricing decisions include method of pricing, discount,
target customer for whom company determining price etc.
Aldi basically sets its product price by giving priority to the lower- and middle-class
people. Aldi follow low cost or competitive pricing to penetrate the market. Aldi is
popular for its discount policy. Aldi is giving discount in almost all of its product
category. The discount policy attracts the customers which further increase the sales.
 Place: place actually means distribution. Company should take decisions regarding how
the product will be reached to the customers. Distribution decisions include number
middlemen in the channel, how many warehouses will be required, what transportation
will be used.
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 Aldi has a strong distribution channel. It has more than ten thousand outlets throughout
the world (Stanton, 2018). It has more than 750 outlets in UK which are located the most
convenient locations of customers.
 Promotion: The means by which product become familiar to customer and induce them
to purchase is called promotion. Promotion decisions include media of advertisement, and
sales promotional tools for promoting products and services.
Aldi use traditional media advertisement tools like other companies. It also uses induce
mail to communicate it special offers with the customers. Aldi currently optimizing the
social media to increase interaction with customers. In addition to, Aldi using different
types sales promotional tools such as seasonal sales offer. Coupon and discount etc.

5.0 Task 4
5.1 Customer service
Customer service is the important part of value creation. It is the process of caring the
customers in different stages of purchase, before purchase and after purchase. The role of
customer service is very significant for any organization.

Customer service should be considered as an important function of business because whether

a customer will purchase again or not mostly depends on the customer service that he or she
receives while purchasing product or service.

5.2 Recommendations for improvement of customer service for Aldi

The following recommendations will be helpful for Aldi to improve its overall customer
service.
 Aldi should provide training to its customer service provider for dealing with
customer more professionally.
 The current manpower of Aldi is insufficient to provide better customer service.
Therefore, it should hire more manpower to ensure the continuous support.
 Online customer service is insufficient in spite of having 24 hours call center services.
In this regard, Aldi can create an online platform where customers can drop their
complaints or suggestions any time from anywhere in the world.
 In order to ensure the performance of the employees Aldi should develop a
continuous performance appraisal measure which will enables the company to
identify the current performance levels of employees.

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 Besides the current practices, Aldi can learn something from other companies operating
in the retail industry. In this regard Aldi can follow the Benchmark organizations for
adopting best practices. In retail industry, TESCO and Sainsbury are the market leader
occupying the maximum share in the industry. TESCO and Sainsbury practices different
types of incentive program for motivating its employees. Especially Sainsbury has
different types incentives plan which includes colleagues discount card, bonus scheme,
and pension plan etc. Thus, Aldi can adopt the similar practices for motivating its
employees which will further improve the customer services.

6.0 Conclusion
The Different marketing strategies will help an organization to attain its desired marketing
objectives. In designing marketing strategy, Marketing audit and marketing mix is very
essential. In addition to marketing mix will help a company to achieve its marketing
objective. However, this study provides a useful idea regarding marketing objective,
marketing audit and marketing mix based on the hypothetical problems of the renowned
supermarket Aldi.

7.0 References
Al Fahad, A., Al Mahmud, A. R., Miah, R. & Islam, U. H. (2015). Marketing Audit: A
Systematic And Comprehensive Marketing Examination. International Journal Of
Scientific & Technology Research, 215-221.
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S. & Kotler, P. (2014). Principles Of Marketing, Pearson
Australia.
Baines, P., Fill, C., Rosengren, S. & Antonetti, P. (2017). Fundamentals Of Marketing,
Oxford University Press.
Lumpkin, G. & Eisner, A. B. (2008). Strategic Management: Creating Competitive
Advantages, Mcgraw-Hill Irwin.
Macleod, L. (2012). Making Smart Goals Smarter. Physician Executive, 38, 68-72.

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Pour, B. S., Nazari, K. & Emami, M. (2013). The Effect Of Marketing Mix In Attracting
Customers: Case Study Of Saderat Bank In Kermanshah Province. African Journal
Of Business Management, 7, 3272.
Stanton, J. L. (2018). A Brief History Of Food Retail. British Food Journal.
Tyler, J. (2018). Here's How Aldi's Explosive Growth Transformed It From A Corner Store
In Germany To One Of The Biggest Supermarket Chains In The World [Online].
Available: https://www.businessinsider.com/aldi-store-growth-history-2018-8
[Accessed 13 March 2020].
Wilson, R. M. S. & Gilligan, C. (2012). Strategic Marketing Management, Taylor & Francis.
www.Statista.Com. (2020). Market Share Of Grocery Stores In Great Britain From January
2015 To January 2020 [Online]. Available:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/280208/grocery-market-share-in-the-united-
kingdom-uk/ [Accessed 13 March 2020].

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