The Product Life Cycle at Lidl

On Wednesday, thanks to the collaboration between AECOC and our institution, two Lidl managers came to ESCI-UPF to discuss the company and how they lead their product life cycle. The conference was part of the Business Marketing course for 2nd-year students of the GNMI and was streamed live on the ESCI-UPF Youtube channel.

Lidl has been one of ESCI-UPF Career Service partners for three years, providing internships to GNMI students and permanent job positions once they graduate from the program. Since the beginning, the Deutsch company has fully integrated them into the business culture and offered them a professional career plan.

Tomislav Rimac, as the lecturer of the course, introduced the session and briefly presented the company and the guest speakers: Simone Beindorf, Senior Consultant for Projects and Training at Purchasing Department at Lidl Spain, and David Domene Rojas, Purchasing Director at Lidl Spain.

Firstly, they spoke about Schwarz Group –of which it is part– and Lidl’s numbers, both worldwide and in the Spanish market. Beindorf and Domene also pointed out four keystones of Lidl’s business model: price, quality, sustainability and shopping experience. They also talked about the company’s commitment to their employees’ professional development.

In the second part of the session, they explained the standard product life cycle at Lidl, focusing on the case example: their gyozas. They expounded the whole journey of the product, from how the idea is born at the offices to the path it follows until it arrives at the customer’s shopping cart.

At the end of the presentation, the speakers opened the floor to students’ questions, who showed interest in the company’s sustainability practices, the challenges on digitalization, and their expansion strategy.