Customers
How we manage Ahold
9
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Dialogue with Stakeholders:
3 Re-engineering our food retail business
4 Recovering the value of U.S. Foodservice
Ahold Sustainability Report 2004
Customers are our lifeblood. Our business is dependent on their
support, trust and loyalty. A permanent dialogue with our
consumers is a top priority. Some of our companies have
dedicated consumer affairs officers to drive this dialogue.
They use a proactive approach to prevent problems by
participating in the development of programs and policies that
affect our customers' experience in the stores and with the
products we offer. They provide an efficient consumer response,
reporting about trends and problem-solving for our customers,
store operations and other business units.
There are many channels through which we engage our customers.
These include store customer service, customer telephone
helpdesk, customer panels, focus group interviews, websites,
printed information, satisfaction surveys and email.
We want to leverage our scale by using common
processes and consolidated support functions where
possible. Doing so will free up more time and
resources which we can instead invest in meeting our
customers' needs.
Focus on our core business
We have a divestment program in place to not only reduce
our debt, but focus our business in terms of format,
location and competitive position. We are concentrating on
what we know best, the supermarket format, and scaling
down our market area to include companies in Europe
and the U.S. which have or are expected to gain number
one or two positions in their markets within 3-5 years.
Harmonizing operations to provide value to the customer
Another important initiative in our Road to Recovery is
the restructuring of our retail business into segments,
which we call "arenas." The arenas unite operating
companies in comparable markets, enabling us to realize
significant synergies within each arena as well as across
arenas. In the U.S., for example, we recently established
a new arena that integrates two of our major operating
companies, Stop Shop and Giant-Landover and the
U.S. retail corporate functions into one business unit.
We are harmonizing back-office processes and systems so
that they require less management attention and can be
provided faster, better and cheaper than would have been
possible for an individual operating company. We are also
coordinating key performance indicators across our
functional and arena organizations. Alignment in the
back-office will make it cheaper to innovate in our
customer offerings, enable more focus on differentiation
and increase our speed to market. All of this will give the
local associate more time and opportunity to get closer to
the customer.
Local control of our brand offering
At the same time as we are working more closely together,
our local companies retain control over elements that
provide a distinctive brand offering to our customers,
including pricing, assortment, branding and the store
experience. We see sustainability as an integral part of
our brand offering.
Building one Ahold culture
We are establishing a common culture and core values for
the Ahold group which clearly define who we are and
what kind of behavior is acceptable and unacceptable
across the company.
Core values
Ahold's local companies have always had strong
individual cultures; now we are better defining the values
that we share as a group. Strong values are crucial to
keep the focus on our long-term success, which is in the
interests of our customers, associates, shareholders and
other stakeholders. We enlisted the support of not only
arena management, but also associates within the
organization in a broad-based effort to determine the core
values of Ahold. They are based on the values of our
individual businesses.
Act Customer!
Engaged Associates
Integrity Always
One Team
Innovative Mindset
Passion for Our Busines
Having a common culture, built on these values, will help
us to harmonize the way we work. A strong company
culture will improve the way we function as a team and
expedite decision-making.
A strong culture will protect the company by acting as a
natural deterrent for behaviors that do not fit within our
values. Associates can be empowered to make choices
that are right for the customer and the company.
We are working to reestablish U.S. Foodservice as
a viable, reliable and ethical company that delivers
value to Ahold. We have a three-phase plan in place
to recover the value of U.S. Foodservice:
