Nestle's International Marketing Strategy

Nestle is the world's largest food products company with factories in 69 countries and a truly global marketing strategy. During 1994, Europe accounted for 46 percent of the company's revenues, North and South America for 36 percent, and other countries for 18 percent ("Osem," 1995, p. 7). In addition to chocolate (for which the company is probably best known in the United States), Nestle participates in pet foods (including Alpo), food products, beverages (such as Perrier) and cosmetics/pharmaceuticals (including Alcon and L'Oreal). At one time, the company owned Stouffer's Hotels, but it completed divestiture of that company in the early 1990s. The Swiss-based company has adopted an international marketing program in part because its domestic market is too small to accommodate its plans, but this program has not been without problems. A boycott begun in the 1980s against the company's infant formula marketing in developing countries has continued, sporadically, to today, and the company has faced problems with its growth through acquisition strategy. This research examines the company's international marketing strategy, with a particular emphasis on the strategies Nestle has adopted in Europe.

The current configuration of the Nestle company came together in the early 1900s when a company owned by Americans based in Switzerland and a Swiss company merged. The American company had been using canning technology for canning milk while the Swiss

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Because Nestle competes in a broad range of geographic areas as well as in a broad range of product categories, it faces competition from an equally broad range of companies. Some of its competitors are multinational organizations with similar product lines that cross regional bounds. These include Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco and Unilever. Other companies focus on a single product area in which Nestle competes. The result of this type of competition is that Nestle must compete vigorously across its international customer base. Since the product categories in which Nestle participates are no longer in the introductory or growth phase, there is increased price pressure, as well, which means that companies who do not focus on marketing and on competitive pricing can quickly lose large amounts of market share which can be difficult to recover. In some cases, smaller competitors have brought pressure on governments to help regulate the activities of Nestle; this is not different from companies in other countries. The acquisition of Source Perrier is a prime example of this. Although Nestle had acquired other companies in the past which had similar products to its own, the Source Perrier acquisition brought considerable criticis

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