Theo Albrecht the United States. Aldi and Trader Joe's, while owned by the brothers, have separate and distinct ownership and operations. Theo Albrecht and his brother Karl revolutionized the German grocery market with a low-cost business model. They had developed the supermarket as an outgrowth of their mother's small grocery store, which she had opened in 1913, in Essen, after Theo’s father had developed emphysema as a miner. Theodor learned the grocery business from his mother, in order to escape the fate of his father in the mines. He and his brother Karl developed Albrecht Diskont, one of Europe’s largest chains of
Perekrestok (supermarket chain) connected. In November 2017, X5 introduced machine learning to bolster targeted marketing at the Perekrestok supermarket chain, and developed personalised offers for all members of the Perekrestok Club loyalty program. The company leverages machine learning to group customers into segments based on common features and create offers for them. The system analyses groups of customers and designs personalised marketing campaigns based on demographic and several hundred behavioural factors, such as: frequency of purchases and ticket size, customer preferences, lifestyle fundamentals, acceptable price levels, favourite product categories and preferred shopping hours. Customer sensitivity to offers is predicted using various analytical models.