Bernardo Trujillo

Bernardo Trujillo (1920–1971) was a Colombian-born American marketing executive. He hosted merchandizing seminars as part of cash register company NCR Corporation's marketing strategy, ultimately influencing the development of modern supermarkets, especially in France, where he became known as the "Pope of Supermarketing."

Bernardo Trujillo
Born	1920 (1920) Bogota, Colombia
Died	1971 (aged 50–51)
Occupation	Marketing executive
Employer	NCR Corporation

Early life

Born in 1920 in Colombia,^[1][2] he studied law in Bogota. He emigrated to the United States and eventually became a naturalized US citizen.^[2]

Career

Trujillo began his career as a Spanish teacher.^[1] In 1944, he was hired as a translator by the NCR Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.^[2]

From 1957 to 1965, as part of NCR's marketing strategy, Trujillo taught executive education merchandizing seminars to about 11,000 students,^[1] the MMM seminars on Modern Merchandizing Methods. In his seminars, he emphasized the need to build supermarket with large parking lots and cheap products^[2] and defined many key principles of the industry, such as "No Parking, No Business". His classes played a particularly significant role in France.^[3] There, his students included Denis Defforey and Marcel Fournier, who later founded Carrefour,^[4] and Gérard Mulliez, who founded Auchan.^[1][2] Other students included André Essel, the co-founder of Fnac; Bernard Darty, the founder of Darty; and Paul Dubrule, the founder of AccorHotels.^[1][2]

Trujillo became known as the "Pope of Supermarketing."^[5]

Trujillo died in 1971.^[1]

A website is dedicated to Bernardo Trujillo

References

1. Duval, Jean-Baptiste (13 February 2014). "Bernardo Trujillo, " le prophète de la distribution "". Libre Service Actualités. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
2. "Bernardo Trujillo, l'accoucheur des grandes surfaces". Les Echos. 8 December 1999. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
3. Daumas, Jean-Claude (July–September 2006). "Consommation de masse et grande distribution: une révolution permanente (1957-2005)". Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire. 91: 57–76. doi:10.3917/ving.091.76. JSTOR 4619135.
4. Alworth, David J. (Spring 2010). "Supermarket Sociology" (PDF). New Literary History. 41 (2): 301–327. doi:10.1353/nlh.2010.0014. JSTOR 40983824. S2CID 201755384.
5. De Grazia, Victoria (2006). Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 399. ISBN 9780674016729. OCLC 907614154.