Reaching 50 Million Nanostores: selling and delivering to the world’s largest retail channel

Abstract

In most of the developing world and many emerging markets, the traditional trade – consisting of millions of “mom-and-pop” stores – forms a major retail channel, especially for consumer packaged goods. In this lecture, I will outline the major characteristics of this channel, and discuss a few models that we have developed to capture the decisions that manufacturers serving this channel face. Further, I will outline some recent developments that open up new research (and entrepreneurial!) opportunities, in particular linking smartphone applications to this vast network of stores.

Biography

Jan C. Fransoo has joined KLU as its Dean of Research and Professor of Operations Management and Logistics per 1 January 2018. Prior to that, he was Professor of Operations Management and Logistics in the School of Industrial Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he also obtained his MSc and PhD degrees. He studies operations and supply chain management problems, primarily in the chemical, pharma, food, and retail industries.

Professor Fransoo has held visiting appointments at Clemson University, UCLA, Stanford University, MIT and the University of Ljubljana, and regularly teaches at many institutions including Monterrey Tech in Mexico and Tsinghua University in China. He has co-authored more than 130 academic publications, advised about 20 PhD students and close to 100 Master students, is a frequent speaker at academic and industry conferences, and serves on the advisory board of multiple university research centers and NGOs.