Harvard In The House

Scholars from the Harvard Business School in Boston,Massachusetts, which is one of the most prestigious business schools in the world, recently visited Henkel on an information-gathering trip. Prof. Dr. David Arnold, chair of International Management, was quite impressed with the strategies used by Henkel’s Detergents/ Household Cleaners business sector for its brand names in the face of global competition. Henkel, according to Arnold, is definitely one up on the competitors in this respect. Hence, he would like to present Henkel’s strategies as exemplary models in his courses this year. The doctrine used to hold that any potential for cost reduction was only possible by means of strict globalization. That also meant restriction of brand name portfolios to a few global brands and a consequent loss of local purchasing range. Dr. Hans-Willi Schroiff, head of Henkel’s Market Research, and Dr. Joachim Bolz, International Marketing Manager Dixan, have developed an alternative model with their colleagues in the Detergents/ Household Cleaners business sector that maintains the local range of brands for consumers, but nevertheless opens up attractive cost reduction possibilities by means of standardization and harmonization. Has the circle been made square? “Not completely, of course,” say Schroiff and Bolz, former academic Lecturers at the universities in Aachen and Münster, “but we are obviously very close. The great interest from Harvard is the best indication of that.”

 

from: Henkel Life, 10/2000