The move comes seven months after Safeway, the second-largest grocery chain in the US, signed up as a board advisor. The purpose of the unit – jointly led by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Ipsos – is to inform participating members about the decision theory of demand generation through shopping.

Jana DeLancey, vice president of global insights for the consumer healthcare division at GSK, said: “We are particularly interested in the collaborative academic and retail aspects of the centre, in addition to the multitude of research experiments designed to deliver a deeper understanding of the judgments and choices that shoppers make.”