One of the posts on Nodoka’s Blog denoted the problem that supermarket giant Aldi faced – that its frozen beef products contained 30% horse meat. Apparently, the major causes for the failure (according to Nodoka) were the a) failure to track the different suppliers of the beef, and b) nobody knew who to blame once it was found that 30% of the meat was horse meat (the authorities, the different suppliers, Aldi, etc).

This, actually raises the question of the operations of the company – if the company is not sure on the quality of the goods that it is receiving from its suppliers, it probably is a better idea to either change a supplier or establish some ground rules which they should follow. The point is, because the operations segment is so important, the COO should continuously regulate the policies that govern the operations of Aldi in order to ensure no such other scandals ever repeat themselves. Currently, they seem to be doing a good job as no other scandals have been linked to the supermarket chain.

I definitely agree with Nodoka’s point that Aldi should work in the customers; best interest in stocking up on high quality food which doesn’t have to be incredibly expensive. With Aldi having won so many awards over the last few years (), customer loyalty is surely going to prove to be an important part of its business. If another scandal such as the horsemeat arises, it could cost Aldi a lot of revenue, given the different types of supermarkets available all around the world. More importantly, Aldi’s Value proposition of having low prices and high quality food could be put into jeopardy (if it hasn’t already) as a result of such situations, thereby destroying its brand name and potentially ruining the company.

In the future, if other issues like this arise, I would recommend that Aldi attempt to deal with the problem internally and maintain its quality control (which could signal a change in operations for the company) which would ensure the safety and genuine quality of the food it sells to its customers.