These six
pillars help
us achieve
our growth
ambitions.
BsimEiHHta
Our strategic pillars
Increasing
customer loyalty
Broadening
our offering
23
Expanding our
geographic reach
Ahold at a glance
Business review
Governance
Our six strategic pillars outline how we are
accelerating the growth of our company.
While our promises inspire the continuous
improvements we are making in our businesses
each day, the pillars drive and enable step-change
innovations and, where possible, help us leverage
the scale of the Group. They also ensure that we
stay ahead of customer behavior and retail trends.
In today's world, consumers have more choice than
ever before and growing expectations of retailers.
To gain their loyalty, we have to understand them better
than anyone else. This is the only way that we can offer
them the products and services they want, the quality
and value they expect, and an easy and convenient
shopping experience.
During 2015, we continued to build more personal
relationships with our customers so that they will want
to keep coming back to shop with us. Our associates
remain key to this - the friendly and helpful service they
provide builds our customers' loyalty and trust. We are
also using our insights and innovative technologies
to develop personalized communications and offers
to customers on the products and services they need
and want.
Our ambition
a Add 1-2% to sales growth through
our customer initiatives.
Our progress
Our loyalty card programs in both the U.S. and the
Netherlands performed veiy strongly in 2015, driving
about 40% more incremental sales than the previous
year and bigger basket sizes. By leveraging our date
analytics capability, we were able to offer each loyalty
card customer additional, and more personalized,
offers. Members-only "money can't buy" privileges,
including a VIP dinner at Albert Heijn's Christmas festival
or behind-the-scenes tours at farms and suppliers, were
particularly popular with our best customers.
Ahold
Annual Report 2015
We are broadening our offering by developing
our store formats, improving our assortment, anc
expanding our online businesses - to give our customers
shopping alternatives that meet their changing needs.
Our fast-growing online offering makes it possible for
our customers to shop when, where and how they
want - either in our stores or online, for deliver or
pickup. We are building an even better, more relevant
assortment, with a broader range of products and
services, including new and innovative own-brand
products and a growing assortment of non-food
products. We continue to strengthen our successful
supermarket formats, while developing additional
formats to better serve our customers' needs.
Our ambition
a Increase our online consumer sales to €2.5 bil
by the end of 2017 and drive profitability.
a Increase own-brand penetration in our U.S.
businesses to approximately 40% by the end
of 2016.
a Open a minimum of 150 convenience stores
in Europe by the end of 2016.
Our progress
Our net consumer online sales in 2015 were
€1.8 billion. Own-brand penetration across all our
U.S. banners grew by 0.4 percentage points, from
376% to 38.0%.
We currently have 72 convenience stores in Europe.
We continue to explore opportunities for growth in our
current markets so that we can make the most of our
existing operations and better leverage our scale. At the
same time, we are looking for opportunities to move
into markets that are adjacent to where we operate, sc
we can apply our skills and build our scale even further.
Our ambition
a Continue to focus on current and surrounding
markets and evaluate new geographies.
a Open 50 supermarkets in Belgium bythe end
of 2016.
Our progress
Our main 2015 achievement was the announcement
of our intended merger with Delhaize. The combined
company will operate in eight countries (excluding
joint ventures in Portugal and Indonesia) with a greatly
expanded U.S. trading area, enabling us to better
leverage our scale to benefit customers.
In the Netherlands, we completed the conversion of
the Jumbo and C1000 stores (71 in total) transferred to
Albert Heijn in 2012. We also completed the integration
and rebranding of all 48 retained Czech SPAR stores
acquired in 2014. We further expanded in Belgium
with 10 new stores, for a total of 38. In the U.S., we
acquired 25 A&P stores, expanding our presence in the
key New York metropolitan area and converted them to
Stop Shop. We also opened a small online pilot store
on Alibaba's Tmall Global platform to learn from the
fast-growing Chinese online market.
