Chillin'Competition

Back from hols with a sad story. During the summer, Theo Albrecht, one of the founders of the Aldi group  – a sort of German Wal Mart – passed away.

Wikipedia has a full entry on Aldi. In addition to espousing the low-cost business model, Aldi has built part of its success on what seems to be a blatant market partitioning strategy. The Aldi group is indeed composed of two financially independent firms, Aldi Markt and Aldi Süd, which respectively serve northern and southern territories (see map above: Aldi Markt in Blue and Aldi Sûd in red). As explained in Wikipedia, the companies describe their relationships as a “friendly relation“…

Thanks to L. de Muyter for the pointer.

In a move that many analysts view as an act of war, Microsoft will release a free version of its upcoming Office 2010 suite… This looks like good news for consumers.

Office has long been the “cash cow” of the Redmond giant. With a price now equal to 0, and possible foregone profits in the short run, the new Office suite may raise questions in terms of predatory pricing. This being said, Microsoft’s offer could also constitute a good illustration of so-called “penetration-pricing”, or of a “meeting competition” – read Google Docs – counter-strategy.

The bottom-line: Advising Microsoft on a daily basis must be really exhausting.

(Image possibly subject to copyright: source here)