Lidl: The Hard Discounter

Lidl began its international expansion in 1988 when it opened a store in Colmar, France. As of 2008, it had a presence in 23 European countries and offered stiff competition to discounters like Aldi, Penny⁷, etc., and to other big retailers like Tesco⁸.

Newspaper reports in early 2008 suggested that with the rising cost of living, customers in Europe were opting to shop at discounters such as Lidl. For example in the UK, Lidl recorded a sales growth of 9.6% (between March and May 2008). Which?⁹, a UK-based magazine that ranked retailers including high-street stores in the UK on the basis of customer satisfaction, ranked Lidl sixth, while Aldi was placed ninth, and UK's leading retailer Tesco, thirty seventh.

Lidl's history goes back to the 1930s when Josef Schwarz (Josef) bought a stake in a wholesale fruit business, called Südfrüchte Grosshandel Lidl & Co. Josef expanded the business to include grocery.

It was renamed Schwarz-Lebensmittel-Sortimentsgrosshandlung (SLS). The business expanded in the 1930s and the early 1940s till it was destroyed during World War II in 1944. It took the company ten years to rebuild the business. It then merged with the A&O retail chain, based in Heilbronn¹⁰...