Entering the South African market for Anheuser-Busch is a complicated and perilous proposition. South Africa is a nation that is unique in many ways. There are eleven official languages spoken in South Africa by six main ethnic groups. There is a large dichotomy between the urban elites, who are better educated, wealthier, and have access to a wide arrange of public infrastructure, and the rural poor, who are largely illiterate and face highly challenging economic conditions. Additionally, Anheuser-Busch would be taking on the South African Brewing Company, which owns 98 percent of the beer market and 57 percent of the overall alcohol consumption market in South Africa (ILO). In order to penetrate this market, Anheuser-Busch must have a complete understanding of the challenges involved and a clearly articulated and well thought out plan to face them. Perhaps the greatest challenge that will need to be confronted involves managing and coping with the infrastructure issues that will inevitably be faced. These issues will include both hard and soft infrastructure, as Anheuser-Busch adapts to the uniqueness of the South African work-force, the market, and the physical resources that are in place. This paper will examine the management challenges involved with the successful entry into the South African market for global alcohol conglomerate Anheuser Busch.
In order for a company to succeed in an expansion to a new locale, one of the first things that must be analyzed is the existing physical infrastructure in that country. Physical, or hard, infrastructure, is the tangible elements existing in a given country, such as the public facilities, housing stock, public transportation systems, electricity generating plants and transmission lines, water and wastewater management plants, sewage systems, and other physical improvements or aspects of a society (California Commission). South Africa presents a challenge for a corporation ...