Aldi and Lidl are both supermarkets who have taken the UK by storm in recent years. Aldi has 990 stores in the UK alone and plan to open their 1000th in 2023. They have also expanded their market share in the UK from 4.9% in 2015 to nearly 10% in 2023. The success of these two supermarkets has come from their unique proposition where they focus on fewer product lines and provide their own labels products to keep costs low which in turn gives them the ability to provide competitive prices.
To drive sales of their own branded products the supermarkets use a tactic know as brand imitation which has proven to be very successful. A recent example of this is Aldi’s caterpillar cake which had an undoubtable resemblance to the famous M&S Colin the caterpillar. Despite the allegations of the copycat branding and that there may be a breach in trade mark law, Aldi were able to brush off the accusations with light-hearted tweets from their PR team.
How do Aldi and Lidl get away with it?
The world’s leading and most popular brands have invested a great number of resources into perfecting their branding on their products and building a reputation. This has been done by establishing their branding through a combination of colour, fonts and symbols which has made their mark distinctive.
Aldi and Lidl take the concept of the distinctive mark for their own branding and make small adaptations to it which allows them to avoid most of the cost and effort it takes to design a brand and build a reputation but still obtain the benefits that an established brand that is recognised by shoppers would receive. Furthermore, as Aldi and Lidl have a lower price tag compared to the established brands, it would encourage consumers to choose the own brand product instead as it is cheaper, and they would be able to associate it with the established brand.
Despite the clear similarities to other brands, Adli and Lidl have rarely been challenged on their own brands. This could be due to the brand having to prove that the copycat product is deliberately created to confuse the consumer with the established brand. However, as there is an awareness from consumers about the approach of discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl, it becomes more difficult to prove and is rarely incited. Moreover, Aldi and Lidl only hint to the branded product with certain packaging similarities, in most situations the product name and font is different. This means that they can take inspiration from the branded version and still be able to avoid disputes.
The consumers are the ones who are benefitting from this as they are able to choose between the established brand or the discounted own brand which mimics the concept of the branded product. However, it will be interesting to see if in the future one of these major brands are able to successfully claim against Lidl and Aldi and open the floodgates for other brands.
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By Abhiraj Aujla
