Colombia's Competitive Grocery Retail Industry
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a permanent change to the global retail industry. Many consumers, dealing with stay-at-home orders and mobility restrictions, took to online shopping and never looked back. Retailers in turn, have had to adjust to this new demand and the diminishing need for physical space. This case explores Grupo Éxito, one of South America’s largest grocery retailers with a 70-year-old history. Founded in Medellín, Colombia, Grupo Exito now operates in Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. With the market shifting, should Grupo Éxito battle head-to-head with their competitors or, instead, bet on differentiated, digitalized ways to serve its customers? Can the company simultaneously tackle both challenges and maintain its vast operations without losing focus?
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Meet the Judges
Kenneth Hoadley
Kenneth has over 30 years of experience as a professor, case writer, academic administrator, and business consultant. With an MBA and doctorate from the Harvard Business School, Kenneth served as President of Zamorano University, a private (nonprofit) university in Honduras specializing in agriculture, agribusiness, the food industry, rural development, and the environment with students from throughout Latin America from 2003 until 2010. He has also held leadership positions at INCAE Business School, the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Arthur D. Little School of Management, and Abt Associates in Washington, D.C.
Ariel Casarín
Professor Ariel Casarín is an Associate Professor at the business school at Universidad Adolfo Ibañez in Santiago, Chile, where he teaches managerial economics, strategy, and nonmarket strategy at the MBA and Executive MBA levels. He has also previously taught at IAE Business School in Buenos Aires for 11 years. Ariel has written several case studies focused on market and non-market strategy on local and multinational firms across Latin America. See Ariel's full bio here.
Danny Zsántó Narea
Danny is an Industrial Civil Engineer and Marketing specialist with 28+ years of experience in multinational companies in the Home Improvement & CPG industry, leading as Corporate and local units of Commercial and Digital Transformation Teams. He is highly experienced in deep experience in Commercial Strategy, Retail Industry, Omnichannel Marketing, BI and Costumer Experience. He currently serves as Co-Founder and partner at 4 Retail Consulting Partners, a boutique consultancy for Retail and CPG.
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About BisNet
The Business International Studies Network (BisNet) provides a forum for top U.S. business schools with active, well established study abroad and international exchange programs, primarily at the undergraduate level. Today’s curriculum must provide students with a global perspective, and enrollment in business education with an international context is steadily increasing.
The need to design programs and identify partners to meet this growing demand and send business students abroad requires patience and creativity. Business students seeking an international experience are often challenged by additional academic hurdles. Established study abroad curriculum is not traditionally rich in international business. As a result, administrators for business students must often take significant initiative to secure partner universities of high standing with courses that will allow progress toward a business degree and address issues of accreditation.
About Southbridge Access
Southbridge Access offers exclusive insight into key trends and access to ground-breaking companies and high-level executives in addition to a complete range of ground support, logistics and group management services in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
Our suite of services, Virtual Suite by Southbridge Access, provides meaningful academic solutions for international business education on a virtual platform. We work closely with leading universities to transform international business curriculums by designing high-impact online engagement with global companies, NGO’s and entrepreneurs.
