Golf fans on Oct. 20, 2022, pose for a photo with Korean food at the U.S. PGA Tour event CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club in Ridgeland, South Carolina. (CJ CheilJedang)

By Yoo Yeon Gyeong

The success story of Korean food's globalization has been featured in a Harvard Business School (HBS) textbook.

Food company CJ CheilJedang said the HBS case study "CJ Foods: The Path to Global Food Leadership" was shared on Jan. 10 at an educational program of the Boston-based school, with attendance of around 180 CEOs and business managers from around the world.

CJ CheilJedang is the first Korean food company to be the topic of an HBS case study.

Jointly written by HBS professors Forest Reinhardt and Sophus Reinert and Shu Lin, a senior researcher Shu Lin from Harvard Center Shanghai (China), the study zeroes in on the marketing of Korean culture.

The highlight was CJ Foods' success in August in selling Korean foods under its Bibigo brand at a K-pop concert in Los Angeles like mandu (dumplings) and tteokbokki (spicy rice cake), concisely showing how far the influence of Korean culture can expand.

Turning to the company's localization strategy, the study stressed the company's responsiveness to market demand, citing its production of mandu with cilantro at a U.S. plant and producing bite-size options. Bibigo mandu exceeded KRW 1 trillion in global annual sales in 2020 and topped the American mandu market in 2021 through a "highly refined strategy," a CJ Foods' news release quoted the study as saying.

dusrud21@korea.kr