Hitt 13e Case Teaching Notes
Case 16: The trivago Way—Growing Without Growing Up?
Case Synopsis
After 10 years in business, hotel meta-search engine trivago had achieved several significant
goals. The firm was doing business in 190 countries, its annual revenues topped 750 million
euros, and in December 2016, it realized NASDAQ’s largest IPO of a German company in history.
The three founders had all worked in corporations prior to starting their own company, and in
their opinion, corporations were rigid and bureaucratic and shunned innovative thinking. Thus,
their primary goal was to create a firm that was anything but “corporate.” From the beginning,
they cultivated an organizational culture that stressed independent thinking, accountability,
responsibility, innovation, and ongoing and immediate communication. With the goal of being
an international competitor, the firm recruited young, entrepreneurial-minded employees from
all parts of the globe, enticing them to the firm’s headquarters in Germany with an exciting,
supportive work environment. In the early days, employees sat in an open-plan environment,
and none of them had job titles.
Learning Objectives
• Explain incentives that can influence firms to use an international strategy. (Chapter 8)
• Identify three basic benefits firms gain by successfully implementing an international
strategy. (Chapter 8)
• Discuss the value of strategic leadership in determining the firm’s strategic direction.
(Chapter 12)
• Describe the importance of strategic leaders in managing the firm’s resources. (Chapter 12)
• Explain what a firm does to sustain an effective culture. (Chapter 12)
Strategic Issues and Suggested Discussion Questions & Answers
1. In the first few years of trivago’s operation, certain aspects of the firm’s “who, what,
and how” changed. What was this evolutionary step? How did this new core
competency benefit the firm?
In the beginning, trivago’s “who, what, and how” was to use the Internet to provide a
searchable database of hotel-related information that would match travelers planning domestic
2. Which business-level strategy is trivago using? How would you describe the firm’s
structure? How does the firm’s structure support its strategy?
Being the first to market with a price-comparison feature that attracts far more site visitors
than competitors has allowed trivago to charge hotels and online travel agents a premium for
3. One of the co–founders’ most important objectives has been to avoid “becoming
corporate”? What do they mean by this? How have they achieved this objective?
Trivago’s co-founders—friends Rolf Schrömgens, Peter Vinnemeier, and Stephan Stubner, who
was later replaced by Malte Siewert—all had work experience in corporations prior to starting
4. Describe trivago’s organizational culture, using at least three specific examples. Which
of the six core values do your examples illustrate? Is this a place you would want to
work? Why or why not?
Students’ examples will vary because the case offers many to choose from. In general, trivago’s
culture can be described as cooperative, democratic, and entrepreneurial, as evidenced by the
following:
• A team-oriented work environment that encourages interaction and communication
• A rejection of hierarchical job titles and an organizational structure based on three
categories: developers (innovators), executors (managers), and supporters (project
leaders). To make this work, employees have to be internally motivated, positive,
5. How do innovations develop within trivago? What elements of the organization’s
culture encourage innovation?
From trivago’s earliest days with only a few employees to the present day with more than a
thousand employees, innovation has been woven into the fabric of the organization’s culture.
Additional Resources
Reuters’s company profile gives in–depth background on trivago’s current financials, leadership,
valuation, news, and more:
In April 2019, The Motley Fool examined trivago’s advertising budget and its effect on profits:
CNBC analyzed trivago’s culture, values, and productivity in August 2017:
trivago CEO Rolf Schrömgens was interviewed at the 2017 Tech Open Air:
This video takes the viewer inside trivago’s Dusseldorf campus: