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Data Analytics Simulation: Strategic Decision Making Simulation Case

Data$-$Driven Management of Blue Detergent

Kelsey$-$White $($K$-$W$),$ an American multinational consumer goods company, manufactured and sold a variety of consumer packaged goods $($CPG$)$ around the world $-$ generally through brick$-$and$-$mortar retailers. In the United States, laundry detergent was a key product for $K-W$ in the form of Blue, its primary brand. Blue came in several formulations $-$ liquid, powder, and single$-$use pods $($see Exhibit $1)$ and had been a staple of the laundry marketplace for several decades. Pod sales had been slow compared to other competitors, and long$-$term Blue customers sometimes even felt that liquid was too modern for their tastes. As the average age of its customers rose, Blue's market share drifted downwards over the past several years. The product was still a profitable one for K$-$W$,$ however $($see Exhibit $2),$ as the market as a whole had enjoyed steady growth.

K$-$W had historically been a relatively conservative company in which most marketing and manufacturing decisions were made on the basis of experience and gut feel about the market. However, four years ago the company appointed a relatively new CEO, Sheila James, who had a strong belief in quantitative and data$-$based decision$-$making. One of her first acts as CEO was to initiate the development of K$-$W Vision, a system for displaying key information about market, financial, and operational performance. James's goal was that K$-$W managers would use Vision to make strategic and operational decisions in many areas of the business. She had come from another company in the consumer products industry, and she argued that $K-W$ was behind other firms in its use of data and analytics for decisions. Vision had just become available to the Blue product team.

In order to build K$-$W Vision, the company needed to compile several years of historical data. Most of it came directly from retailers, from syndicated providers of retail data about CPG firms, or from internal

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