Eataly: Reimagining the Grocery Store

Sunil  Gupta; Michela  Addis; Ruth  Page

Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2015

Eataly: Reimagining the Grocery Store

by Sunil Gupta, Michela Addis and Ruth Page

Abstract

Within a few years of its operations, the Italian-based supermarket Eataly created a lot of buzz and excitement among consumers and media. Eataly's initial success was even more impressive in an industry known for its intense competition and low margins. How did Eataly manage to grow so quickly, and could it sustain its growth in the future?

Keywords: Customer Engagement; innovation; entrepreneurship; marketing; retailing; Supermarkets; Agribusiness; Customers; Entrepreneurship; Food; Marketing; Retail Industry; Food and Beverage Industry; Europe; Asia; North and Central America;

Language: English

Format: Multimedia

Educators Purchase

Citation:

Gupta, Sunil, Michela Addis, and Ruth Page. "Eataly: Reimagining the Grocery Store." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Case 515-708, January 2015.

Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2019

HOPI: Turkey's Shopping Companion

Sunil Gupta, Donald Ngwe and Gamze Yucaoglu

The case opens in 2017 as Onur Erbay, CEO of HOPI, a multi-vendor loyalty platform, is contemplating a critical decision. The case chronicles the origins of Boyner Group, the parent company of HOPI and a major retailer in Turkey, and development of retail and customer relationship management (CRM) in Turkey over the years. Before HOPI, Boyner Group retailers were unable to trace customers across the Group’s brands or form insights about customers’ preferences and habits beyond what brand-specific CRM and loyalty programs provided data for. HOPI was born as the management team at Boyner Group realized the need to serve the customer holistically; the program was designed as a coalition loyalty program including non-Boyner retailer partners. The case provides a detailed overview of the design choices for HOPI—a mobile only app with its own currency, paracik, its revenue model, user experience, and how the company planned to leverage big data to segment the customers for retailers and increase purchasing power for customers. Since its launch in 2015, HOPI had 5.5 million downloads and 300 thousand daily active users browsing campaigns offered by over 116 coalition retailers that ranged from gas stations and cinemas to supermarkets and department stores. In 2017, Erbay, who had ambitions to grow HOPI beyond a loyalty program, was faced with harsh realities: the Turkish market was very price sensitive, several competitors had emerged since HOPI’s launch, and several retailers and consumers preferred discounts at the time of purchase instead of earning loyalty points for future purchases. Erbay was also facing pressure from the parent company to make HOPI profitable. Was it time for HOPI to pivot to the discount model and abandon its original concept? HOPI has provided a supplementary data set to allow for a more in-depth analysis of the program's impact on customer behavior and retailer profits. The data covers four years, two years prior to HOPI’s start and two years after, for two retailers in the coalition loyalty program. The data set includes all customers and transactions at each of the retailers, the final price paid by each customer, and whether the HOPI app was used as part of the transaction. In all, the data contains approximately 2.7 million transactions for 578,078 unique customers.

Keywords: Loyalty programs; multi-vendor platform; retail; big data; Customer Relationship Management; Mobile Technology; Business Model; Data and Data Sets; Competitive Strategy; Decision Making; Technology Industry; Retail Industry; Turkey;