The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed the way Britain shops

Re:The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed... by claudius on Monday March 11, 2019 @10:13PM (#19364762)

Aldi siphons away marketshare from other stores with large overheads and from brands which spend more on advertising than the products themselves. Personally I very rarely notice a difference in quality between Aldi-bought products and those from more expensive chains (e.g. Edeka or Rewe), though the latter are more hit-and-miss (never need to check the expiration date at Aldi, always have to at Edeka…) and much more chaotic. This second aspect, which makes it hard to shop quickly, combines with very slow people working the tills, meaning that the time it takes me to buy a single item in Edeka is longer than what I need to buy a whole week’s worth of food at Aldi.

The random collection of stuff is mostly useless, yes, though there are some items there with sufficient regularity and quality to be worthwhile, e.g. WD-40 and tape. Clothing is typically also ok though neither fashionable nor pretty.

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Re:The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed... by hutzlibu on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @02:17AM (#19365828)

"Clothing is typically also ok though neither fashionable nor pretty. "

Nor durable in my experience. Also I bought sandals that fell apart after a week. And the tech I bought there also only looks good on the specs. So AlDI is ok for food, but anything I'd like to last, I buy elsewhere.

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Re:The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed... by claudius on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @02:22AM (#19365849)

I bought a winter coat there for 24.99€ in November and so far it lasted quite well. Given that it’s predecessor was 10x as expensive and was quite worn after 8-ish years, it was ok.

Absolutely agree on tech, "Aldi-Notebooks" tended to have a bit of a bad reputation (not sure if they still sell them…).

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Re:The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed... by makomk on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:43AM (#19366575)

Oddly enough, their plain T-shirts seem to be better quality than most of the others I own from mainstream clothing stores (and definitely better than the ones I got from Gap).

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Re:The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed... by winningcontinue on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @04:24AM (#19366279)

been an entire decade since I've been in an Aldi. Their products used to entirely suck. I'm quite impressed with the stuff they got now, or my tastes have changed from early twenties to today in terms of differientiating food quality.

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Re:The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed... by zwaps on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @05:31AM (#19366539)

Their quality has always been above budget level. In France, the quality was actually much better than the store-brand of other grocers.

Supermarkets use different brand categories to price differentiate, while quality is not always changing quite as much. Furthermore, Aldi's low cost logistics allows them to be more efficient.

So at a time, the average quality at Aldi was pretty much the same as Carrefour or Franprix in France, just less variance.

And then there's always some items where Aldi's quality is simply better, even better than the quality brand.

I distinctly remember that you could not buy decent cured salmon, even for like 6-7€ anywhere except Aldi, which had perfectly good cured salmon in two or three varieties for around 3€

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