<story><title>The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed the way Britain shops</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/05/long-read-aldi-discount-supermarket-changed-britain-shopping</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>temp-dude-87844</author><text>Aldi is really quite bizarre, in a way the article tries to capture. For all their rock-bottom prices on store brand goods, whose quality ranges from pretty good to never-again mediocre, they stock the store with a rotating selection of random crap that fell off the boat, baiting the impulse for an aspirational or just-in-case buy. But then again, by now, Amazon&amp;#x27;s front page recommends a carousel of similar dropshipped junk from vendors whose names appear to be machine-generated. At least Aldi bothers to &amp;quot;curate&amp;quot; in the sense of commissioning most of its stock as a store brand, whereas Amazon is seemingly devoid of the slightest amount of steering from above, save for locating popular items after-the-fact and releasing an AmazonBasics.&lt;p&gt;In the process, Aldi and its slightly-nicer copycats siphon away marketshare from normal stores who actually carry name-brand food and home goods you&amp;#x27;d want to buy again, if you weren&amp;#x27;t on a misguided mission to penny-pinch. Stores pivot towards overpriced premade sandwiches, cafes and hot buffets, and meal kits that make zero economic sense, because that&amp;#x27;s where you can still pull a good margin. The middle empties out.&lt;p&gt;If you look, you can see this same process play out in other areas of retail and services. Aldi&amp;#x27;s gain is our collective loss, the widespread embrace of an insincere &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot;, either because our budgets are truly crunched, or because we don&amp;#x27;t let ourselves value our mundane maintenance desires. On the far side, people who have rejected this can look like they&amp;#x27;re engaging in conspicuous consumption. Sometimes they are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jdietrich</author><text>A lot of the random stuff in the middle aisle is genuinely very good. Their own-brand chisels are something of a cult item among traditional woodworkers, because they&amp;#x27;re ludicrously cheap but perfectly capable of fine work. There&amp;#x27;s always excitement in the cycling and running communities when Aldi release a batch of sports kit, because it&amp;#x27;s excellent value and it does the job. You&amp;#x27;re never going to shop at Aldi for a pair of featherlight race shoes or an aero skinsuit, but their kit is brilliant for everyday training use.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that Aldi is bizarre, I just think it&amp;#x27;s very German. There&amp;#x27;s more to life than GDP. There&amp;#x27;s nothing insincere about &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot;. Not everything has to be an ostentatious display of aspirational consumerism. Most of us are satisficers in some aspect of our lives. I&amp;#x27;ll spend stupid amounts of money on finding the perfect mechanical keyboard, but I just don&amp;#x27;t care very much about paper towels or laundry detergent or potato chips. I might shop elsewhere for some items, but I&amp;#x27;m perfectly happy to do the bulk of my shopping in a store with a very simple value proposition - perfectly acceptable quality at a consistently fair price.&lt;p&gt;In a mainstream supermarket, I have the pervasive feeling that I&amp;#x27;m being manipulated. There are too many SKUs, too many special offers, too many coupons and loyalty schemes. It&amp;#x27;s like shopping for a cell phone contract - you know you&amp;#x27;re being taken for a ride by a deliberately overcomplicated offering, but you don&amp;#x27;t have the time or the inclination to figure it out. I don&amp;#x27;t get that feeling in Aldi. I&amp;#x27;m in and out in half the time, I spent half as much and I&amp;#x27;m rarely disappointed. If that&amp;#x27;s the future of retail, then sign me up.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed the way Britain shops</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/05/long-read-aldi-discount-supermarket-changed-britain-shopping</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>temp-dude-87844</author><text>Aldi is really quite bizarre, in a way the article tries to capture. For all their rock-bottom prices on store brand goods, whose quality ranges from pretty good to never-again mediocre, they stock the store with a rotating selection of random crap that fell off the boat, baiting the impulse for an aspirational or just-in-case buy. But then again, by now, Amazon&amp;#x27;s front page recommends a carousel of similar dropshipped junk from vendors whose names appear to be machine-generated. At least Aldi bothers to &amp;quot;curate&amp;quot; in the sense of commissioning most of its stock as a store brand, whereas Amazon is seemingly devoid of the slightest amount of steering from above, save for locating popular items after-the-fact and releasing an AmazonBasics.&lt;p&gt;In the process, Aldi and its slightly-nicer copycats siphon away marketshare from normal stores who actually carry name-brand food and home goods you&amp;#x27;d want to buy again, if you weren&amp;#x27;t on a misguided mission to penny-pinch. Stores pivot towards overpriced premade sandwiches, cafes and hot buffets, and meal kits that make zero economic sense, because that&amp;#x27;s where you can still pull a good margin. The middle empties out.&lt;p&gt;If you look, you can see this same process play out in other areas of retail and services. Aldi&amp;#x27;s gain is our collective loss, the widespread embrace of an insincere &amp;quot;good enough&amp;quot;, either because our budgets are truly crunched, or because we don&amp;#x27;t let ourselves value our mundane maintenance desires. On the far side, people who have rejected this can look like they&amp;#x27;re engaging in conspicuous consumption. Sometimes they are.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taneq</author><text>&amp;gt; they stock the store with a rotating selection of random crap that fell off the boat, baiting the impulse for an aspirational or just-in-case buy&lt;p&gt;I believe this is the key to their fanatical customer base. The random crap aisle means that when you go into the store &lt;i&gt;there&amp;#x27;s a chance&lt;/i&gt; of an awesome deal on &lt;i&gt;some random thing&lt;/i&gt;. This provides strong intermittent reinforcement which directly triggers the brain&amp;#x27;s reward mechanism, no different to loot drops in an MMO or payouts from a poker machine. People literally get addicted to Aldi&amp;#x27;s random-stuff aisle.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve actually taken to referring to Aldi as &amp;quot;visiting the casino&amp;quot;. :P</text></comment>