In addition to it some additional challenges faced by the Brita brand were: * Bottled water consumption was growing at a tremendous pace which was the main cause of the Brita brand’s volume decline. Bottled water was expected to surpass carbonated soft drinks as the most popular commercial beverage in the US in 2004. For bottled water (400 brands), 20% of brands were driving 80% of category volume. * The “leaky bucket” issue where customers who bought the product stopped using the brand because these consumers were finding changing filer too onerous job. * Refrigerators with built-in water filtration were going rapidly at an expected rate of at least 2 million units per year from 2005.
Production of their new caffeinated malt beverage was outsourced to the same contract brewery that makes Mike’s Hard Lemonade. The initial run was financed in part by a $100,000 investment from parents and friends, and by $50,000 in credit card debt. Identifying problems – The mixture of alcohol and caffeine. In September 2010, New Jersey's Ramapo College banned the drink After a Four Loko- infused bender sickened 17 students and six visitors. The next month, Nine students at Central Washington University were hospitalized after mixing excessive amounts of Four Loko with other alcohols.
Firestone: A Reputation Blowout The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company was founded in 1900 by Harvey Firestone in Akron, Ohio. Firestone began their long relationship with the Ford Motor Company in 1906 when Henry Ford purchased two-thousand sets of Firestone tires. In 1978, due to defective tires, Firestone was forced to recall 14.5 million tires. They also faced $500,000 in fines for concealing safety problems. Since then there has been a large number of tire recalls and has been a major problem for the tire industry for over 25 years.
In 1988, the European born Joe Camel took his first flight overseas to the United States. Since then, Joe has become one of the most successful ubiquitous marketing ploys of its generation. In the past years, R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco company that produces camel cigarettes was losing in sales 5-8% a year. Camel cigarettes were considered the older man’s cigarette and did not appeal to the younger upcoming generation. Since older smokers tended to either quit or die, Reynolds needed to create an advertising campaign marketed for the next generation of smokers.
Its shops tripled from 2000 to 2004, with 427 stores in 45 states and four foreign countries. However, at the end of 2004, the company announced several accounting revelations, changing image of the company in Wall Street and plummeting its stock price in the market. On May 7, 2004, it indicated that its Hot Doughnut and Coffee Shops were falling short of expectations and that it had plans to close three of them (resulting in a charge of 7 to 8 million dollars). Following the news, the Wall Street Journal addressed the aggressive accounting treatment the company had made for franchise acquisitions. For instance, it purchased a struggling Michigan franchise, asked some of its underperforming stores to be closed, and agreed to pay the company’s accrued interest on past-due loans for it to raise its purchase price of the franchise.
THE BEVERAGE BATTLEFIELD In 2007, the President and CEO of Coca-Cola asserted that Cokehas had a rather rough run in India; but now it seems to be gettingits positioning right. Similarly, PepsiCo’s Asia chief asserted thatIndia is the beverage battlefield for this decade and beyond.Even though the government had opened its doors wide to for-eign companies, the experience of the world’s two giant soft drinkscompanies in India during the 1990s and the beginning of the newmillennium was not a happy one. Both companies experienced arange of unexpected problems and difficult situations that led themto recognize that competing in India requires special knowledge,skills, and local expertise. In many ways, Coke and Pepsi manag-ers had to learn the hard way that “what works here” does notalways “work there.” “The environment in India is challenging, butwe’re learning how to crack it,” says an industry leader. THE INDIAN SOFT DRINKSINDUSTRY In India, over 45 percent of the soft drinks industry in 1993 con-sisted of small manufacturers.
Long Cycle Process 1. Determine the facts: a. Wal-Mart (WM) consistently appeared on Fortune’s list of the 100 best companies to work for in the U.S. b. WM was ranked 94 in 2002. c. Several lawsuits against WM alleging gender discrimination while published practices indicated fair practices. d. WM was the world’s largest employer and largest company in 2002. e. Non-unionized company working incessantly to fend off organizing attempts in the U.S. and around the world. f. Employees at WM increased by 50% since 1996 and reaching a total of 930,000 employees by 2001 in domestic U.S. stores. g. From 1996 to 2001, percentage of women working at WM decreased from 67 to 64%.
In November 2006 the retailer Target recalled 200,000 Kool Toyz action figures because of lead contamination and sharp edges. On June 13, 2007 RC2 Corporation recalled 1.5 million of its Thomas & Friends toy trains because of high lead levels in the paint. RC2 quickly fired both the company producing the train vendor but disclose their names. Some 8,000 toy factories in China employed 3 million people, producing most of the world’s toy. Approximately 80 percent of the toys sold in the United States were made in China.
Except of course, the VW-owned car manufacturer itself. With its new Octavia and Fabia models launched and targets to increase sales by £2.8 million, 2001 saw a very real brand challenge beyond the good work it had already started to address when it hired Chris Hawkin as head of marketing at the start of 1999. Formerly at Ford and Peugeot, Hawkin heads a position he admits Skoda “hasn’t had for a while.” “When I arrived, the marketing function was very unstructured,” he says. “It was mostly exposure work; physically getting the car out for people to see it.” Hawken’s main criticism though was the lack of time devoted to non-Skoda owners. “Research told us that there was 60 per cent brand rejection,” he says, “while ‘consideration’ of the brand Skoda case study 33 managing partner Stuart Archibald, who has been working with Hawken since winning the account.
Also, he led Laura Ashley to its first gross profits since 1989, and in fiscal 1993, gross profits were expected to reach 12 million pounds during 1992. But in early April 1994, the launch of a children's range and a furniture range helped deflect the looming crisis by 1997, after a torrid few years and numerous chief executives, the company was in serious financial difficulties. The Laura Ashley brand was represented in the USA largely through licensing agreements, but all of its stores there have now closed and the business as a whole was separately owned from that of its parent company in the UK. In this case, it was mainly discuss Laura Ashley’s strategic alliance with Federal Express. The managers participated in its development on both sides wondered, what its eventual