Publications

5 Sep 2013
Conference Presentation

The Color of Taste: Selling Food in Clear Packages in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States

By: Ai Hisano

This paper examines the role of color in the marketing and retailing of food products by focusing on the increasingly popular presentation of food in clear packages in the early-twentieth-century United States. In the 1910s, a candy company began using cellophane to... View Details

Keywords: Food; Product Marketing; Food and Beverage Industry

November 2017 (Revised October 2018)
Case

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

By: Jill Avery

Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods, offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3 price point that promised an... View Details

November 2016 (Revised March 2018)
Background Note

Note on the Impact of Millennials on the Food System

By: José B. Alvarez, James Weber and Natalie Kindred

In 2016, the millennial generation (those age 19 to 35 in 2016), the largest generation by population in the U.S., was entering its prime home buying, family forming, earning and spending years. This generation was showing different beliefs and behaviors than previous... View Details

Keywords: Millennials; Consumer Packaged Goods; Food; Age; Consumer Behavior; Agribusiness; Demographics; Values and Beliefs; Consumer Products Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

November 2017 (Revised November 2021)
Case

Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelēz International: Crafting a Corporate Strategy

By: Raffaella Sadun, David J. Collis, Amram Migdal and Kerry Herman

The case focuses on Irene Rosenfeld’s tenure as CEO of the global snack food company Mondelēz International. Beginning in 2006, she had led the company through many acquisitions, including France’s LU Biscuit and British confectionery company Cadbury, before, in 2012,... View Details

2021
Working Paper

Accounting for Product Impact in the Consumer-Packaged Foods Industry

By: Amanda Rischbieth, George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the consumer-packaged goods industry. We design a methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact estimates on customer... View Details

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2017
Working Paper

Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing

By: Ai Hisano

This working paper examines how innovations in transparent packaging, specifically cellophane in the mid-twentieth century United States, helped retailers create full self-service merchandising systems, including selling perishable food. While self-service stores began... View Details

Keywords: Food; Product Marketing; Business History; Food and Beverage Industry; United States

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05 Jun 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing

Keywords: by Ai Hisano; Food & Beverage

16 May 2016
HBS Case

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

complicated when a single plate or package of food contains ingredients from multiple countries.” Prevalence of food-related claims: Food safety claims, which are often... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Food & Beverage

29 Mar 2011
News

Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags

11 Jan 2017
Research & Ideas

The Paradoxical Quest to Make Food Look 'Natural' With Artificial Dyes

cheese no longer comes packaged with a Day-Glo orange powder, thanks to a pledge to stop using artificial dyes (Yellow 5 and Yellow 6) in the product. “Due to consumer protests against synthetic colors, the standardization of color moved... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

26 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

developed marketing strategies to appeal to consumers’ senses from the nineteenth century to today.” Cellophane gets an entire chapter in Hisano’s book. As she explains in the paper, cellophane packaging let View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Food & Beverage; Food & Beverage; Food & Beverage

December 2017
Case

Molino Cañuelas: Serving Customers from Seed Development to the Kitchen Table

By: Jose B. Alvarez, Maria Fernanda Miguel and Mariana Cal

Molino Cañuelas was a vertically integrated food company with a management system that allowed it to innovate and grow systematically. With sales of $2 billion in 2016, the firm not only produced flour, vegetable oil, and packaged food products, it also owned a port... View Details

Keywords: Quality Management System; Food Industry; Molino Cañuelas; Argentina; Vertical Integration; Quality; Management Systems; Expansion; Global Range; Growth and Development Strategy; Agribusiness; Food and Beverage Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Argentina

01 Mar 2014
News

The Solution to the Global Food Crisis Just Might Come from Nigeria

to package the maize. Masha's company warehouses the grain at the end of the process, commoditizes it, and sells it to food conglomerates like Nestlé, which uses it to make baby View Details

Keywords: Francis Storrs; John H. Davis; Michael Halse; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing

01 Sep 2007
News

Riding It Out

the company’s revenues have increased by leaps and bounds. But the melamine pet food scare last spring could have ruined everything. The bad news came to a place it shouldn’t: Disney World. It was during one of the few vacations that Paal... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; dog food; pets; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing

06 Dec 2021
News

Elevator Pitch: Power Sourced

Illustration by Drue Wagner Illustration by Drue Wagner Chaku Foods Nikki Okrah (MBA 2021), CEO and Founder Concept: A snack-food company in Okrah’s native Ghana that is building farming supply chain infrastructure for other consumer... View Details

Keywords: agriculture; Africa; food manufacturing; entrepreneurship; startup; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing; Food Manufacturing

July 2023 (Revised May 2024)
Case

Vytal: Packaging-as-a-Service

By: George Serafeim, Michael W. Toffel, Lena Duchene and Daniela Beyersdorfer

The Germany-based startup Vytal operated the largest digital-native reusable packaging-as-a-service network globally, having raised nearly €15 million, established a large network of restaurant partners, and prevented the use of millions of single-use take-out food... View Details

December 2017
Case

Mondelēz International

By: David Bell, Kerry Herman and Amram Migdal

Mondelēz International is a packaged foods company competing primarily in “snacks” around the globe. The case describes how and why the Kraft Inc. CEO, and later Mondelēz CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, created Mondelēz and how she positioned it as a growth company at a time... View Details

Keywords: Agribusiness; Food; Growth and Development Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; Asia; China; Latin America; Middle East