Aldi & Lidl - How similar are they??

Introduction

In the UK grocery market, Aldi & Lidl are termed as the game-changing ‘German discounters’. Their lean retailing approach has been instrumental in feeding them large bites of the market share pie. 

Agreed. Both are German and both offer a great price-value to customers.

However, there are some key differences we found out. The differences were surfaced by ClearSentiment: our machine-earning based Customer Sentiment Analysis engine.

This article is a snapshot of al di lidl differences between the two retailers, distilled from customer feedback on social media. 

Social Media Footprint

Customer Engagement

Customers engagement with Aldi on the Social media is significantly more (300%) than that for Lidl. Also, Aldi has a far higher percentage of re-tweets as compared to Lidl

Geography

Customer feedback for Aldi is fairly spread across the England, Scotland and Wales with a heavy focus on London. The female contribution in the London is almost double of the male user feedback.

Lidl customer feedback seems evenly spread across the UK with relatively more concentration in the North. Male users from the North seem to be more actively engaged than their southern counterparts.

Device Usage

iPhone dominates, followed by android and then by web client for both - Aldi & Lidl. However, iPhone usage is significantly more for female users in the Aldi engagement while male users have a big footprint of the Android.

User Profile

Gender Spit

Aldi has significantly higher female user engagement (45%) in comparison to male users (26 %). On the other hand, Lidl has a higher male user engagement (34%) as compared to the female users (27%)

User Engagement Frequency

Using the top 50 prolific tweeters, the average for a Aldi user is 11 tweets per month while the same of Lidl is 3 tweets per month

Not surprisingly, 32 of the top 50 prolific tweeters for Aldi are female users and for Aldi it is 17

User Follower Count

Here, Lidl seems to have an edge. The average number of followers for the top 50 tweeters is 1815 while of Aldi it is the bit lower at 1590.

User Context in Feedback

This is where the analysis engine actually motors through the unstructured free text feedback to identify what were customers thinking of when they provided their feedback. It is based on our self-learning 'Derive User Context' (DUCx) algorithm to provide actionable insights

Bakery products for both were loved by customers – with comparisons drawn with some of the bigger grocery chains

With regards to In-store Experience, Aldi customers generally were very positive whereas Lidl customers were quite bitter

Quality of Fruit & Veg in Aldi stores was widely appreciated by customers.

Non-food offers from Aldi seemed to gain more traction than the same form Lidl

Lidl's cheeky advertising seems to get more explicitly response than the same for Aldi

Insights

Advertising Impact

Lidl’s 'laddish' cheeky advertising may be have more of an entertainment value but does not appear to pull the ‘purchasing’ strings of females. Aldi’s ‘warmer’ advertising campaign seems to attract more female customers.

Women Rule

Women in the house seem to predominantly control grocery shopping (and everything else, of course!!). Is there a correlation between the high percentage of female shoppers and relatively better performance of Aldi?

In-store Experience

In-store Experience and Customer Service appears to be quite a dominating thought in customer minds.

Perception

The general perception of Aldi can be compared to a reliable and mature partner while Lidl is more of a reliable but maverick partner. 

Other Key Considerations

• This analysis is based on the unsolicited user feedback in social media. There is no official data input from Aldi and Lidl to our analysis.
• There can be a number other factors related to Aldi & Lidl that can affect customer feedback. For example, competitor presence in store catchments, internal strategies/policies adopted (customer retention, price management), buying profile of the store localities etc

Closing Comments

Thank you for reading this post. Your comments are welcome. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in exploring your organisation data to identify hidden patterns, establish context and provide actionable insights for stakeholders.