MARKETING IN ADVERSE ECONOMIC CLIMATES
MARKETING IN ADVERSE ECONOMIC CLIMATES
In 1837 William Procter and James Gamble, two innovative businessmen set out to make candles and soap out of hog tallow from Cincinnati' s meat packing industry. In 1915, the company began its international thrust when it built a manufacturing facility outside the United States, in Canada. In 1948, the company began its first Latin American subsidiary with a plant in Mexico and in 1954, it expanded into Europe.
Today, P&G estimates that its products already can be found in more than 90 percent of all U.S. homes, and more than 20 percent of all homes in the world. The company's list of soap and laundry products includes: Bold, Dreft, Bounce, Cheer, Era, Tide, Downy, and Gain laundry products; Dawn, Ivory, Joy and Cascade dish soaps; and Mr. Clean, Comet, and Spic & Span cleansers. P&G's paper products division peddles such mainstays as Charmin toilet tissue and Pampers diapers. The health care division includes Crest toothpaste, Vicks products, and Pepto-Bismol.
P&G's food products include Crisco shortening, Duncan Hines cakes, Jif peanut butter, Folgers coffee and Pringles potato chips. Its beauty care products include Max Factor, Cover Girl and Noxzema makeup and Head & Shoulders, Pantene, and Pert Plus shampoos. In all, P&G is the 18th-largest corporation in the United States, and sells more than 300 brands in 140 countries.
The company plans an aggressive expansion in Central and Eastern Europe, southern Latin America and China - whose 1.4 billion people will buy $1 billion worth of P&G products in 1998. Not all of the 140 countries it sells in, however, are always prosperous. And when the economy of a country falters, the company has learned to let its local managers handle the situation.
Such a situation happened in Venezuela in the 1980s when its Venezuelan subsidiary, under the management of Raphael Henao, reported a ...