Analyse the internal and external environment of Aldi and the UK supermarket industry using Pestel, Swot, Porters five forces & BCG

• For Sainsburys Pestle and Swot analysis, see Sainsburys Pestle & Swot.
• For Tesco Pestle and Swot analysis, see Tesco Pestle & Swot.

1.0 INTRODUCTION 

Aldi is a German international discount store opened in the UK in 1990 and in Ireland 9 years later. Aldi has experienced rapid growth in the UK becoming the fifth largest grocer over taking co-op (Butler 2017).The company owns more than 726 stores only in the UK with market shares of approximately 6.9% ahead of co-op which has 6% as of 2017( Davay 2017; BBC 2017).

2.0 Aldi Pestel analysis 2017-2018 (Opportunities and threats)

PESTLE is used as a strategy to analyze the macro environment and identify how future trends in political, social, economic, environmental and legal environments may impact on the company (Johnson et al.2008).This analysis helps identify the key drivers of change; These key drivers constitute of opportunities and threats in the firm’s external environment and they can be overcome by focusing on the opportunities to overcome the threats. PESTLE can be used alongside SWOT to utilize the core competences of companies like Aldi so as to take advantage of emerging opportunities and overcome any threats.

2.1 Political environment

2.1.1 The impact of Brexit on Aldi operations in the UK

According to Mintel (2017a), Brexit uncertainty has continued to plague most UK supermarkets even post Brexit. In 2017, the weakening Sterling came with rising inflation which forced UK customers to cut back on their spending especially on non-essentials, with their biggest worry being the increasing retail prices post Brexit (Mintel 2017a; Mintel 2017b). There was an increase from 45% in February 2017 to 49% in May 2017 with customers thinking Brexit would impact prices negatively (Mintel 2017a). However, even with the tough times characterised by