Ahold Delhaize Targets Sustainability & Omnichannel Goals
Multinational food retail company Ahold Delhaize has announced a strategy that focuses on sustainable, affordable and healthy food delivery.
The company’s ‘Growing Together’ strategy is designed to keep it at the forefront of innovation in healthy foods, omnichannel experiences and supply chain transformation, said Ahold Delhaize CEO Frans Muller; “growing Together ensures we will serve customer needs through a well invested and future focused foundation.”
Ahold Delhaize is a Dutch-Belgian multinational retail and wholesale holding company that formed in 2016 following the merger of Netherlands-based Ahold and Belgian Delhaize Group.
Its sustainability ambitions is to become a net-zero company for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2040 and for Scope 3 emissions before 2050.
- Scope 1: Direct emissions that a company controls or owns, such as from burning fuel in vehicles or running boilers.
- Scope 2: Indirect emissions that a company causes by purchasing and using energy, such as electricity, steam, heating, and cooling.
- Scope 3: Indirect emissions that occur in a company's value chain, including upstream and downstream activities.
How Ahold Delhaize is optimising omnichannel
The company also has ambitious plans to drive up omnichannel loyalty sales penetration to over 80% by 2028, targeting 30 million monthly active users by 2028.
Omnichannel is a cross-channel business model that companies utilise to improve their customer experience. Companies can leverage multiple channels for order placement, pickup, or delivery, optimising supply chain operations and meeting consumer demands for speed and flexibility.
Ahold Delhaize omnichannel shoppers spend 1.5 to 3 times more than regular shoppers in the company’s most mature markets. This is why it is so keen to digitally transform its customer loyalty programs, in a bid to drive up omnichannel loyalty sales, by funnelling loyalty customers from physical cards to digital apps. It is the apps that the company expects to yield a rapid increase in monthly active users.
Ahold Delhaize has been continuously improving its omnichannel customer experience, allowing its customers to shop whenever and wherever they want. Its omnichannel efforts include innovations around a number of its brands, including Food Lion, whose Stop & Shop web-based app Ahold Delhaize migrated to a fully native app that provides a more intuitive and seamless customer experience.
In February this year, the company announced that five of its European brands were spearheading the delivery of an app convergence project. This strategic initiative resulted in a unified, modular app framework designed to streamline and enhance the shopping experience for customers at Albert in the Czech Republic; Delhaize in Belgium and Luxembourg; Maxi in Serbia; Mega Image in Romania; and Alfa Beta in Greece.
