Not quite...WOW could never stop Aldi coming in, to do so would...

Not quite...WOW could never stop Aldi coming in, to do so would have been illegal. What they did not do was counter Coles fast enough. When I joined WOW in HQ I was told during induction that Coles was down but would come back, just like WOW had done. Then when Coles did start coming back the Supermarkets boss (Foran) wanted to go hard at them through price cuts and matching so that they would struggle to stand up, this was overruled by the board who decided to treat shareholders better than customers.

When the GFC hit, instead of cutting divs temporarily to fund building development which had stopped dead, they cut capex in customer facing products and projects and instead maintained the divs. Again shareholder over customer.

Eventually the customer sentiment and perception started to turn against them, helped along by their ignoring social media for awhile that allowed campaigns to flourish during weekends and holidays that soured customers views further.

The only way they can turn things around is to change that customer perception and then sentiment. Their VOC stuff will help but it needs a bigger mindset change.

Keep your customers happy and the shareholders will follow. No Sales = No Profit = No Divs.