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Ben&Jerry in Japan

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CHAPTER 15 • LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

439

Part 3 Closing Cases
Ben & Jerry’s—Japan
On an autumn evening in Tokyo in 1997, Perry Odak, Angelo Pezzani, Bruce Bowman, and Riv Hight gratefully accepted the hot steaming oshibori towels their kimonobedecked waitress quietly offered. It had been just over nine months since Odak had committed to resolving the conundrum of whether to introduce Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to the Japanese market and, if so, how. The next morning would be their last chance to hammer out the details for a market entry through 7-Eleven’s 7,000 stores in Japan or to give the goahead to Ken Yamada, a prospective licensee who would manage the Japanese market for Ben & Jerry’s. Any delay in reaching a decision would mean missing the summer 1998 ice cream season, but with Japan’s economy continuing to contract, perhaps passing on the Japanese market would not be a bad idea. Perry Odak was just entering his eleventh month as CEO of the famous ice cream company named for its offbeat founders. He knew the 7-Eleven deal could represent a sudden boost in the company’s flagging sales of the past several years. He also knew that a company with the tremendous brand recognition Ben & Jerry’s enjoyed needed to approach new market opportunities from a strategic, not an opportunistic, perspective. imported ice cream, and expectations of falling tariffs on dairy products suggested new opportunities for ice cream imports from abroad. Although prices were attractive in Japan, about $6 per pint, it was unclear how much of that would go into the pockets of the manufacturer versus various distributors. Jerry Greenfield, one of Ben & Jerry’s founders, was interested enough to visit Japan on a market research tour in early 1996. The purpose was to see just how Ben & Jerry’s might gain

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