Publications

February 2015 (Revised April 2015)
Case

The Board of Directors at Market Basket

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Emily McTague

The firing of Market Basket CEO Arthur T. Demoulas by his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, and directors affiliated with him set off employee protests throughout the grocery store chain. Industry specialists estimated that Market Basket was losing close to ten million... View Details

Keywords: Organizational Behavior; Shareholder Votes; Board Of Directors; Board Dynamics; Board Decisions; Boards; Grocery; Organizational Culture; Organizational Structure; Business and Shareholder Relations; Corporate Governance; Food and Beverage Industry; New England

14 May 2015
News

Whole Foods' Misguided Play for Millennials

Keywords: millenials; grocery stores; retail; segmentation; demographics; generations; Miscellaneous Store Retailers; Retail Trade

01 Dec 2020
News

Steady as She Goes

Courtesy Coles This was going to be the year everything got back to normal. Since Leah Weckert (MBA 2008) became the CFO at Australia’s Coles Group in 2018, the supermarket giant had announced a demerger—the largest in the country’s history—from corporate parent... View Details

Keywords: April White; COVID-19; change management; leadership; women; grocery stores; Food and Beverage Stores; Retail Trade

July 2017 (Revised November 2017)
Case

Propel

By: Mitchell Weiss and Sarah McAra

In 2014, Jimmy Chen, a former product manager at Facebook, founded the start-up Propel to build software for low-income Americans. After conducting in-depth behavioral research, Chen and his small team in New York City began to develop technology to address the... View Details

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Exercise

E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (C): Free Delivery Terms

By: Ayelet Israeli and Fedor (Ted) Lisitsyn

The E-Commerce Analytics group at the traditional CPG firm was in charge of compiling various online sales reports, as well as making data-driven recommendations for sales and marketing tactics. In a series of exercises, students address different data challenges for... View Details

January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
Supplement

E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (C): Free Delivery Terms

By: Ayelet Israeli and Fedor (Ted) Lisitsyn

The E-Commerce Analytics group at the traditional CPG firm was in charge of compiling various online sales reports, as well as making data-driven recommendations for sales and marketing tactics. In a series of exercises, students address different data challenges for... View Details

January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
Teaching Note

Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods

By: Jill Avery

Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods (CPG), offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3.00 price point that promised... View Details

Keywords: Brand; Brand Management; DTC; Private Label; Groceries; Packaged Food; Personal Care; Startups; Retailing; Amazon; Brands and Branding; Marketing; Marketing Strategy; Business Startups; Disruption; E-commerce; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; United States

16 Jul 2007
Research & Ideas

Understanding the ‘Want’ vs. ’Should’ Decision

with Milkman and Rogers, they discuss their working paper "I'll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: Decreasing Impatience over Time in Online Grocery Orders," which looks at our tendency as consumers to choose... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Retail; Entertainment & Recreation

26 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

development of self-service merchandising systems in American grocery stores, but also revealing how cellophane manufacturers tried to control the narrative of how women buy food. “Cellophane changed how people shopped,” says Ai Hisano,... View Details

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

23 Jul 2018
News

Shoppers with Strong Religious Beliefs Spend Less and Make Fewer Impulse Purchases

September 2023
Case

Trilling Foods: Managing People with Data

By: Alexandra C. Feldberg and Jeffrey T. Polzer

Trilling Foods, a regional bricks-and-mortar grocery chain, has recently provided its frontline managers with new tools for using data. Allison Andersen, Trilling’s VP of Data Science, has spearheaded these efforts. Yet, as she works with Kent Wade, the general manager... View Details

Keywords: Digital Transformation; Management Practices and Processes; Training; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Food and Beverage Industry; Retail Industry

February 2021 (Revised February 2021)
Background Note

eGrocery and the Role of Data for CPG Firms

By: Ayelet Israeli, Fedor (Ted) Lisitsyn and Mark A. Irwin

This notes provides information about the eGrocery industry and how traditional CPG companies handle this channel and potential data. It is recommended to use together with a series of exercises entitled: "E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (A), (B), and (C)." View Details

22 Aug 2022
Research & Ideas

Can Amazon Remake Health Care?

At a time when health care providers have gone all in on telemedicine, Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, surprised Wall Street in late July when it announced it would acquire 1Life Healthcare Inc., which runs the subscription-based One Medical primary-care... View Details

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Health

August 2019
Case

Walmart's Omnichannel Strategy: Revolution or Miscalculation?

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman

This case describes Walmart's omnichannel strategy in 2018 as it battled Amazon for online retail market share. The case discusses Walmart's early forays into online retail, as well as its 2018 strategy, which aimed to integrate Walmart's enormous brick and mortar... View Details

Keywords: Acquisition; Strategy; Internet and the Web; Distribution; Distribution Channels; Competition; Retail Industry; Bentonville; Arkansas; New Jersey; Seattle; United States

25 Apr 2018
News

Case Study: Can This Japanese Snack Food Company Break into the U.S. Market?

26 Jun 2017
News

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

May 1993 (Revised July 1995)
Case

Air Miles

By: John A. Quelch

The chairman and CEO of a U.K.-based frequent buyer travel award program is planning on launching in North America. Management must determine the marketing strategy to be used, specifically how the U.K. program should be altered, whether the U.S. and Canadian markets... View Details

Keywords: Marketing Strategy; Service Delivery; Market Entry and Exit; Adaptation; Product Launch; Service Industry; Canada; United Kingdom; United States

Find at Harvard

Career Coach

Mike Beveridge

Mike enjoys helping students understand and navigate the consulting recruiting process as well as careers within the agribusiness and grocery retailing spaces. Having worked in these industries, Mike can provide insight into how firms... View Details

August 2009
Article

Mental Accounting and Small Windfalls: Evidence from an Online Grocer

By: John Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman

We study the effect of small windfalls on consumer spending decisions by comparing the purchases online grocery customers make when redeeming $10-off coupons with the purchases they make without coupons. Controlling for customer fixed effects and other variables, we... View Details

Keywords: Mental Accounting; Windfalls; Marginal Propensity To Consume; Coupons; Marketing Communications; Consumer Behavior; Accounting; Cognition and Thinking; Retail Industry