Best Business Schools Hiring:
Consumer Products Industry
From consumer goods manufacturers to online retailers, MBAs have benefited from diverse career opportunities in the industry. The typical path sees graduates filling roles from strategy to marketing, operations to technology at the biggest companies—Amazon, Aldi, Ikea and Walmart, to name a few. But consumer retail is confronting rising costs, with US tariffs adding uncertainty to supply chains and product lines. Wherever the levies land, it’s generally accepted that the result will be higher prices for and less spending by consumers. Already the industry has seen deep job cuts in 2025, and that could continue. Business schools sent fewer graduates into consumer retail jobs in 2025—521, compared with the 628 in 2024.
Consumer products ranks 15th for pay among 26 industries reported in survey data used for our Business School ROI calculator, with median compensation (salary plus bonus) of $136,501, or 20% less than the median for all fields.
| School | Number of Hires | Percentage of Hires | Median salary (US dollars) | Median salary (local currency) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard | 14 | 2.6% | $150,000 | Not applicable | |
| Stanford | 4 | 2.0% | $142,500 | Not applicable | |
| MIT (Sloan) | 4 | 1.8% | $138,500 | Not applicable | |
| Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 8 | 1.4% | $137,500 | Not applicable | |
| Rice (Jones) | 3 | 3.0% | $135,000 | Not applicable | |
| Chicago (Booth) | 10 | 2.3% | $128,000 | Not applicable | |
| Columbia | 30 | 5.4% | $128,000 | Not applicable | |
| Duke (Fuqua) | 19 | 6.8% | $128,000 | Not applicable | |
| Northwestern (Kellogg) | 25 | 6.8% | $128,000 | Not applicable | |
| Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) | 5 | 3.7% | $128,000 | Not applicable | |
| Virginia (Darden) | 8 | 2.7% | $127,000 | Not applicable | |
| Cornell (Johnson) | 8 | 3.9% | $127,000 | Not applicable | |
| NYU (Stern) | 13 | 5.6% | $127,000 | Not applicable | |
| Notre Dame (Mendoza) | 4 | 6.8% | $126,500 | Not applicable | |
| Dartmouth (Tuck) | 7 | 3.2% | $126,500 | Not applicable | |
| Texas at Austin (McCombs) | 7 | 4.5% | $126,000 | Not applicable | |
| Vanderbilt (Owen) | 11 | 9.9% | $126,000 | Not applicable | |
| UCLA (Anderson) | 15 | 7.2% | $125,000 | Not applicable | |
| Minnesota (Carlson) | 9 | 19.6% | $125,000 | Not applicable | |
| UC at Berkeley (Haas) | 11 | 6.4% | $125,000 | Not applicable | |
| Indiana (Kelley) | 12 | 13.5% | $125,000 | Not applicable | |
| North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | 10 | 5.8% | $125,000 | Not applicable | |
| Michigan (Ross) | 21 | 7.7% | $125,000 | Not applicable | |
| Yale | 11 | 4.8% | $123,500 | Not applicable | |
| Wisconsin | 4 | 8.5% | $122,500 | Not applicable | |
| Ohio State (Fisher) | 3 | 8.6% | $120,000 | Not applicable | |
| Brigham Young (Marriott) | 9 | 13.8% | $120,000 | Not applicable | |
| USC (Marshall) | 11 | 9.3% | $120,000 | Not applicable | |
| Texas Christian (Neeley) | 3 | 13.6% | $120,000 | Not applicable | |
| Rochester (Simon) | 5 | 5.9% | $120,000 | Not applicable | |
| Emory (Goizueta) | 3 | 4.3% | $117,000 | Not applicable | |
| Rutgers | 4 | 25.0% | $117,000 | Not applicable | |
| IE | 10 | 7.0% | $114,501 | €105,352 | |
| Cincinnati (Lindner) | 3 | 16.7% | $110,000 | Not applicable | |
| Georgetown (McDonough) | 7 | 4.2% | $110,000 | Not applicable | |
| INSEAD | 12 | 3.0% | $108,684 | €100,000 | |
| Mannheim | 4 | 12.1% | $107,054 | €98,500 | |
| Michigan State (Broad) | 4 | 11.1% | $100,000 | Not applicable | |
| London Business School | 7 | 2.1% | $96,999 | £75,000 | |
| Northeastern (D'Amore-McKim) | 3 | 9.4% | $90,000 | Not applicable | |
| POLIMI Graduate School of Management | 3 | 7.9% | $82,056 | €75,500 | |
| Hult | 12 | 8.2% | $77,600 | Not applicable | |
| ESADE | 7 | 7.4% | $76,079 | €70,000 | |
| EAE | 5 | 5.6% | $72,818 | €67,000 | |
| SUNY at Buffalo | 3 | 7.5% | $65,000 | Not applicable | |
| Cambridge (Judge) | 7 | 6.4% | $57,788 | £44,682 | |
| Indian School of Business | 64 | 8.2% | $37,613 | ₹3,200,000 | |
| Shanghai University of Finance and Economics | 5 | 5.3% | $34,136 | CN¥246,400 | |
| IMT Ghaziabad | 14 | 7.7% | $21,745 | ₹1,850,000 | |
| T A Pai Management Institute | 33 | 6.6% | $17,631 | ₹1,500,000 | |
| ESIC | 3 | 7.1% | Not available | Not available | |
| IESE Business School | 4 | 1.9% | Not available | Not applicable | |
Schools with fewer than 3 hires are excluded from the list.