Institute for Simplicity

A Hard Discounter does not need to offer everything

For the first time, ALDI Nord and Süd are offering promotions on brands. A customer gets 25 % discount on 18 Nivea products when purchasing at least three of them and a minimum basket of 9 Euros. As ALDI is extending its assortment more and more they even try to compete with the No. 1 and No. 2 in drugstores in Europe. A battle which cannot be won. Rossmann and dm are by far the largest in their field in Europe. Both sell their private labels and also a huge variety of commercial brands of Beiersdorf and others. ALDI´s purchasing conditions cannot be as good as those of the leading drugstore chains. One of the greatest virtues of a hard discounter is to say „No“. „No“ to traditonal marketing, „No“ to promotions, „No“ to loyalty programs, „No“ to brands where private labels are available, „No“ to categories where other chains are better, „No“ to… everything which means complexity. A hard discounter by nature does not need to sell everything and concentrates on volume items where it is untouchable. A Hard Discounter is a master of „not“ and doing without – that´s what makes him powerful. 

In the past, ALDI won the trust of its customers because they could trust blindly in the lowest sales prices in the market. Now, ALDI´s marketing department took over. Such a department was an unknown and not acceptable institution previously. ALDI became one of the most successful retailers and one of the most admired companies in the world – without any marketing department. ALDI was the master of simplicity. Now, ALDI´s  marketing experts are becoming the new drivers of complexity.