19 October 2012—With the signature of an agreement on the Lille campus, Christophe Bonduelle, CEO of Bonduelle, and Olivier Oger, dean of EDHEC Business School, have made this partnership official. This event took place at the outset of a seminar that brought 250 Bonduelle executives to the EDHEC campus to kick off the company’s plan for reflection and action for the coming decade.

With this partnership, Bonduelle commits to helping EDHEC build a teaching and research department in marketing of the first rank. An internationally renowned professor, the Bonduelle Professor of Marketing, will be hired. He or she will organise the research agenda and build the team necessary to do the studies, the research, and the teaching. As of January 2013, a new course will be launched as part of the EDHEC programme.

The Bonduelle chair opens EDHEC research in marketing to approaches that have not yet been explored: the impact of new technologies on the management of food brands, the means of distribution, and the brands themselves. This is one of the key current issues in marketing: giving the companies and managers of the future the keys to an improved evaluation of the sociological, technological, and economic changes that will have an impact on consumption as well as on the strategies of retailers and their suppliers.

“The Bonduelle chair,” says Olivier Oger, “is a perfect materialization of the EDHEC for Business strategy; this partnership with a leading multinational in the food industry provides EDHEC an innovative field for progress and experimentation for our students, our programme offerings, and our researchers.”

Christophe Bonduelle concludes: “When Olivier Oger suggested endowing a chair at EDHEC in the context of the centre of excellence, I immediately agreed and recommended creating a chair in marketing that would enable the School to acquire high-calibre teaching and research expertise and Bonduelle to benefit from a system for thought and research that would allow us to understand and foresee the impact of these new technologies on our vegetable business—from canned goods to fresh and including deep-frozen products as well—so that it will be easier for us to make them an integral part of our marketing strategies.”