THE INFANT FORMULA CONTROVERSY

Introduction

Nestle is one of the most salient, corporate, global entity, which specializes in food-processing. The average annual sales of the company estimated to be around $ 100 billion annually, around the world. Although there are many companies that are marketing the supplements, specifically for infants but yet Nestle is the one that received most of the attention.

Few decades back Nestle had been subject to an accusation of involvement in the production of food supplement that entailed an infant feeding formula, which resulted in mass deaths of infants and the babies, specifically in the Third World countries of Africa. Throughout the initiation of the project, Nestle had used a heavy promotional in order to promote its infant food supplement product line. Not only through “above the line” advertising but also through direct selling technique, in which “milk nurses” received commissions for making the sales.

The first and the foremost reason for this problem was the marketing myopia that Nestle had encountered by introducing a product, which meant to be for the first world nations, into the third world nations, who were not yet ready for such a change. This became the primary reason to accuse Nestle that it pushed, the product line to mothers, who were not yet ready or were not living in societies that could make the right use of such products. Furthermore, they also got accused of trying to create a perception that feeding the infants through supplements and powdered milk is better than the breast feeding. However, Nestle took effective corrective measure later on in order to eliminate the discrepancy.

Discussion

Marketing Myopia and Resulted Problems

The first and foremost mistake that Nestle made was of adopting a global approach with its infant product line. Products that are related to the health and nutrition is always designed according to the specific needs of the local market. Hence it would have been more sensible, for them to pick up a multi domestic approach rather than a global approach. They should have designed a proper campaign that would have created the initial awareness in the mother of the third world country, including the fundamental training of hygienic issues, which might have assured the usage of the water that would been contaminated.

Secondly they could have initiated the campaign in hospitals and the maternity homes about the proper usage of the product, which could have accompanied the training of the proper blending, the maximum time the mixture could be used for and how far it could have helped the infants in complementing their nutritional rather than completely supplementing them.

Considering the economic conditions and the purchasing power parity of the countries in Africa, Nestle should have foreseen the consequences of affordability in such cases. The price of the Nestle product line in such countries was higher than 30 percent of the minimum wage and by the time the baby got 6 months old, the price reached to almost 47 percent, this worked as a reason for mother to dilute the mixture to almost ...