German discounter Aldi, have outstripped the other leading superstores in the UK in terms of shop expansion, opening up around 60 stores in 2015.
The discount store has been doing well, garnering market share while the big four stores are dropping it.
They are going to turn this into a physical expansion and increase their shop floor space by over a million square feet.
Sainsburys, Tesco and Morrisons are all trying to expand, even though some are closing down their convenience stores.
However, this planned increase by Aldi is bigger than these three other supermarkets combined.
It has been reported that Asda is going to open up new stores, but their expansion will still be dwarfed by Aldi, with 600,000 square feet to be opened by the Walmart owned store.
The trend in the market currently seems to be avoiding a big weekly shop in favour of shopping little and often at small, local stores. The big stores have shot themselves in the foot by opening up smaller convenience shops that are more readily accessed by people. These customers therefore won’t need to make the trip out of town to the large stores.
Aldi opening up such a large number of stores could affect this trend turn if people will be willing to make the same out of town weekly journey they always have, but for the much larger discounts that Aldi provide.
One other way Aldi haven’t so far followed the market is by not having an online delivery service. More and more people in the UK are starting to buy groceries online, and Aldi still don’t have this kind of service as it goes against the discounting, low price deals that form the backbone of Aldi’s business model.
However, with 5% of the UK’s grocery shopping done online, this country would be a good contender for the German store to break into the online world in the near future.
