Name

Professor’s name

Course

Date

Pepsi’s Marketing Mistakes in the Philippine Market

Marketing mistakes tend to affect international marketing, as was in the case of Pepsi Company described in the article. A small error in marketing promotion ended up costing the company up to $20 in losses, including legal, brand, and physical costs and a plummeted market share that would take to rebuild. In the early 1990s, Pepsi made a move to expand into the Philippine market, where Coca-Cola was dominant. At the time, the Philippine market was the 12th largest market for soft drinks, with an increasing population of 62 million. They came up with a promotion whereby they put numbers on soda bottles. There would be numerous small winners and two grand winners of $40 000. The number 349 was set as the winning number for the grand prize

However, they were one simple problem; none of the people who won the $40, 000 prizes would get their reward. There was a computer glitch with one of the vendors who made them produce 800, 000 bottles, with each containing a “349” number. As a matter of fact, Pepsi themselves were the ones who would manufacture the two winning bottles and ship them to the Philippines market. This meant that 800, 000 people had received the winning number as opposed to anticipated two winners which made it difficult for Pepsi to award the $40, 000 prize tag. They had accidentally sent winning caps worth $32 billion and meanwhile, the winners were going bananas at the thought of the prize tag money. The marketing strategy was momentarily effective as Pepsi’s market share reached 24.9%, more than 4% within two months. Pepsi realized the optics were not looking good and they had made a terrible mistake as the population, which mainly comprises poor people had begun forming action groups and demonstrating across Manila in their local headquarters and government buildings. Because they could not just simply walk away from the situation, they offered to pay $18 to the 800, 000 winners, at the cost of $8.7 million as opposed to the original budget of $2 million, but the deal was still not enticing enough. This shows how even the smallest marketing mistakes are likely to affect international marketing for companies.