Berlin Case Studies Introduction: Bonial

The Berlin Global Discovery students have been introduced to a local entrepreneurial enterprise to begin their in-depth research. On Tuesday, the group visited Bonial to learn about their work, and to begin professional collaboration with this world-renowned business.

Photo by Pierce Callister

Who is Bonial? 

Bonial helps retailers promote their products and increase sales by using the Internet to contact local consumers in their region. Their offices are in the USA, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Chile. They're a big deal, with over a million partners and customers world-wide! Click here to learn more about how they work.

Bonial professionals spoke about two products they are looking to integrate into the Berliner market: 

1. The Amazon Echo, the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service named Alexa 
2. A German Version of the Retale Coupon App 

Our students are being tasked to use both qualitative and quantitative research to prove whether or not these products can succeed in Berlin. In understanding why or why not, the students split into small groups and spent two days interviewing at least 20 Berliners per group. This experience proved very useful, as the students learned first-hand what Berliners think of these products. This interviewing experience is a college-level task, and everyone was SO impressive with their results and determination. Once again, this group is proving themselves to be mature and successful entrepreneurs! 

Here are some snapshots from the afternoon spent at the Bonial Berlin headquarters:

Stay tuned for more! At the moment, everyone is hard at work towards a professional presentation for Bonial employees. If I do say so myself, Bonial is lucky to be collaborating with our CIEE Global Entrepreneurship Students :)

Written by Program Leader Mary Kate Mueller