Cadbury Beverages, Inc.: Crush® Brand
Shih Ming Chang
Grand Canyon University
MKT 450
July 24, 2011
1.) Three main participate in manufacturing and distribution of carbonated soft drinks in the United States: concentrated producers, bottlers, and retailers. The concentrated producers’ and bottlers’ responsibilities differ for regular and diet drinks. Bottlers are responsible of serving retail outlets, such as placing in-store displays, local advertising, and restocking, whereas concentrated producers are responsible of developing new products, national consumer advertising, promotion programs, and marketing research. There are approximately 40 concentrated producers in United States, but only top three (Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Dr. Pepper/7Up) account for 82% of industry sales. Whereas approximate 1000 bottlers in United States and they are either owned by concentrated manufactures or franchised. Franchised bottlers are usually given the exclusively rights for a certain territory, but they cannot sell a directly competitive brand. As far as retailers concerned, the main retail channels are supermarkets, vending machines, and fountain services. In fact, over 40% of the soft drink sales are sold in supermarkets which are claimed to be crucial in the company’s distribution net.
2.) During the period of 1985 to 1989, the total sales in the orange carbonated rinks’ category increased by 23.5%, from 102 million cases to 126 million cases. This change was due to the launch of Mandarin Orange Slice (MOS) and Minute Maid Orange (MMO) by PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, respectively, in 1986. Both companies introduced products with intensive advertising, promotion and distribution-rejuvenating efforts. As a result of the above change, market shares of main competitors, Sunkist and the Cadbury’s Crush brands, had gone down
