June 2016
Teaching Note
HBS Case Collection

Relating to Peapod

By: Jill Avery and Susan Fournier

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:16

Abstract

This case concerns the topics of relationship marketing, customer acquisition and retention, brand loyalty, service failure and recovery, new product introduction, and the use of consumer ethnography to study consumer behavior. Specifically, the case explores the relationships formed between consumers and the Peapod consumer-direct grocery delivery service, as revealed through an ethnographic study of Boston-area Peapod shoppers conducted between summer of 1997 and fall of 1999. Three representative case histories are brought to life using extensive quotes from these selected longitudinal case history interviews. The cases are constructed to allow insights into the factors prompting relationship formation between consumers and service brands, the types of relationship contracts that are formed, and the dynamics that work to strengthen, weaken, and rupture consumer/brand contracts over time.