11
Our strategy continued
Our six strategic pillars
Ahold
Annual Report 2011
Group at a glance
Performance
Governance
Financials
Investors
We have identified six priority areas to reshape the way we do business and drive growth. These
are known as Ahold's strategic pillars. The first three pillars are focused on creating growth and
the second three on how we will enable growth.
Increasing customer loyalty
We want our businesses to be our customers' favorite place to shop. We want our customers to
enjoy our stores, our people, and our products so much that they do most of their shopping with
us and recommend us to others. We expect our customer loyalty initiatives will contribute
between one and two percent to identical sales growth across the company.
Our businesses already have a loyal and robust customer base. We are winning customers'
hearts and minds by understanding them better than anyone else and giving them what they
want. We are also becoming more personal in how we communicate with our customers, and
in the products, services and shopping experience we offer them.
Broadening our offering
Our businesses are growing by providing customers with alternatives based on their changing
needs.
Online
We are accelerating our online offering by building strong local online businesses that support our
brands. We plan to significantly expand our footprint in the next five years and triple our online
sales to €1.5 billion by 2016.
We are using our international experience to grow our online businesses so that all our customers
can shop how, when, and where they want. We will offer the best prices and broadest range and
give customers the option of having their orders delivered at home, or collecting them from our
stores or dedicated pick-up points.
Format development
Our supermarket format continues to be the core of our business. In addition, we are developing
different formats to better serve our customers' needs. This includes strengthening and
expanding our already successful small format business. We are going to open a minimum of
150 convenience stores in Europe by 2016. In the United States, the Stop Shop divisions and
Giant Landover will remodel 100 supermarkets to new layouts, and in the Czech Republic, Albert
will remodel 50 compact hypermarkets to our new compact hyper format.
Assortment
We are developing an even better, more relevant assortment, with a broader range of products
and services. We are introducing new and innovative own-brand products that are clearly
recognizable and will keep customers coming back to shop with us. All of these are available at
different price points and offer choice, quality, and value. We have targets to achieve 40 percent
sales penetration of own-brand products in the United States. At the same time, we are managing
our supply chain to ensure we are sourcing products in a responsible and sustainable way.
Expanding our geographic reach
We are continuing to look for growth opportunities in our existing markets to leverage our scale.
We are also moving into adjacent markets where we can apply our skills in operating
supermarkets and further build our scale. In addition to the convenience stores we will open in
Europe, we are going to open at least 50 new supermarkets in Belgium by 2016.
At the same time we are looking for opportunities to expand into new geographies where we can
achieve sustainable profitable growth and use our skills and retail expertise.
