Date of Graduation

5-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in International Business

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Marketing

Advisor/Mentor

Rapert, Molly

Abstract

Over the summer of 2020, I had the privilege to intern with Nestlé USA (NUSA), a sector of the multinational food and beverage processing conglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. As of 2014, Nestlé is known as the largest food and beverage company in the entire world. Over the course of ten weeks, I was able to learn from an immense number of opportunities that were available to me while working for this corporation. Nestlé was founded in 1866 by Henri Nestlé, originally as the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company that was aimed towards leveraging a safe, long shelf-life alternative to fresh milk. From 1866 onward, Nestlé has changed and grown immensely alongside their consumer base.

As the world was struck by the global pandemic of COVID-19, businesses were put to the test during a time of immense uncertainty. The employees of Nestlé, such as myself, were not only aware of the need to realign their prioritization strategies within the scope of the pandemic, but they were also guided through a virtual format to ensure that they were still able to fulfill the needs of the company and consumers. In the Nestlé 2020 Annual Report, Mark Schneider, the current CEO of Nestlé, outlined the company’s response to the pandemic through demonstrating dependability and agility.

Although my experience at NUSA was not held in the environment in which I expected, at the Nestlé corporate office in Nashville, Tennessee, I believe that working alongside other employees during a very unprecedented time was what grew me as a professional more than anything else. Not only did my peers at Nestlé work towards offering their product selection to their customer base as fast as possible in terms of their supply chain operations, but Nestlé as a global corporation also ensured that they pushed their internal efforts to meet the needs of their own employees. COVID-19 has impacted every single individual on the planet in one way, shape, or form, and Nestlé as an organization recognized that. Throughout the pandemic, the company pushed to meet the needs of their consumers before anything else and re-strategized all sides of their business in order to do so.

Keywords

Nestle; COVID-19; internship; learning experience; Strategic growth channel; relationships; retailers

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