Aldi has appointed Richard Thornton as group customer interaction director, in a promotion from the position of communications director.
Thornton has replaced Nick Ridley, who has moved on from Aldi after 27 years with the discounter.
The communications director position previously held by Thornton has been filled by Rebecca Heley, who has transferred from global customer strategy director.
Thornton has been at Aldi UK since 2014, starting as a corporate communications manager before being promoted to communications director in 2018. Before joining Aldi, he held positions in PR and marketing at Westfield Shopping Centres, Bupa and East Midlands radio station Gem.
Heley has been at Aldi since 2012, and spent five years as an area manager before moving on to global business co-ordination roles, first as a manager and then strategy director. She was appointed global customer strategy director in August last year.
The changes come as Aldi tests new ways to interact with customers, including a series of competitions in which shoppers have been asked to email a receipt from a recent shop for a chance to win vouchers. The contests have included a ‘Big Advent Giveaway’ running throughout December, a £3,000 voucher giveaway in February, and a ‘fund for new parents’ promising a £100 voucher a week in March.
Marc Houppermans, executive partner at Discount Retail Consulting, said Aldi was experimenting with ways of collecting data to communicate directly with customers without having an app-based loyalty scheme which provided member-only discounts.
“They don’t want to have a loyalty app like Lidl’s and they want to keep it very simple, but they also see that Lidl knows all about their customers and is starting to sell the data, and having no loyalty is not an option,” said Houppermans. “I don’t think they have a solution yet.”
No comments yet