Strategy for Successful Entry into a Concentrated and Highly Competitive Market

The Australian grocery sector is both highly concentrated and highly competitive, providing a major challenge to any would-be new entrant. Despite the attractiveness of the Australian market to global players (Zarkada-Fraser & Fraser, 2002), no foreign-owned retailer had established a successful greenfield operation in Australian until this was achieved by ALDI. In this paper, we report the result of research which sought to understand how ALDI has achieved this outcome. The results indicate the centrality of the “coherence” (Roberts, 2004) of key design elements strategy, structure, operations, HR practices and culture – in producing this outcome.