Unilever: Combatting Global Food Waste

David F. Drake; Janice H. Hammond; Matthew G. Preble

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2015

Unilever: Combatting Global Food Waste

by David F. Drake, Janice H. Hammond and Matthew G. Preble

Abstract

The global consumer goods company Unilever was on pace to hit a number of aggressive targets by 2020 as part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Project, including a goal to halve the waste associated with the disposal of its products. Unilever's chief supply chain officer Pier Luigi Sigismondi and his team were working towards this goal and had chosen to first focus on three key areas—sugar, tomatoes, and tea—and had analyzed where in the “farm to fork” value chain product was wasted. This analysis showed that very little was wasted within areas of the value chain directly controlled by Unilever, and most occurred either upstream with its suppliers or downstream with consumers. How could Unilever encourage these actors to change established practices and entrenched behaviors within a short timeframe to help Unilever meet its sustainability targets and also to improve the operations of its partners in the value chain? By encouraging consumers to better manage their food purchases, did Unilever risk harming its own sales or those of its retail customers? Could Unilever encourage industry-wide changes to have a real impact on global environmental sustainability?

Keywords: food waste; sustainable business and innovation; sustainable supply chains; Sustainable Operations; organization alignment; Environmental Sustainability; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Food; Agribusiness; Strategy; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Forest Products Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Retail Industry; North and Central America; Europe; Asia; Africa; Latin America; India;

Language: English

Format: Print

26 pages

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Citation:

Drake, David F., Janice H. Hammond, and Matthew G. Preble. "Unilever: Combatting Global Food Waste." Harvard Business School Case 615-040, March 2015.

Chef Wolfgang Puck oversees a disparate business empire that includes fine dining restaurants, a catering business, and various licensed products that run from cookware, to soup, to fast-casual restaurants. His businesses activities are divided among three separate entities—Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide—that share some formal and informal linkages. But the key person holding this all together is Wolfgang Puck himself. Now in his late 60s, Puck wonders what he needs to formalize—in terms of systems, processes, and management—to ensure that his different businesses will endure long after he is no longer involved in the day-to-day management of these three businesses.

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019 (Revised June 2019)

Wayfair

Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie L. Ma and Matthew G. Preble

In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel rather than by manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology – specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images – to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take – a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.

Keywords: visual assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts;

Citation:

Rayport, Jeffrey F., Susie L. Ma, and Matthew G. Preble. "Wayfair." Harvard Business School Case 819-045, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.) View Details

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Unilever: Combatting Global Food Waste

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