to consolidate the international aspects of the profitability. Before the creation of the PRI all restaurants were independent. Their headquarters were located in Dallas and were responsible for every restaurant located overseas. This helped the company to be more organized, efficient, and profitable because they were able to "establish a coordinated restaurant strategy."28With the Real Plan, prices and the exchange rate of the Real and the dollar were stable. This factor dropped the number of sales by half. The reason is that people could perceive the high price of Pizza Hut. They used two different strategies to try to increase sales. First strategy was to reduce prices by 25% so they could be able to compete with McDonald's (which is very successful).29 The second strategy was to invest in marketing. Many units lowered prices and used the samba (a Brazilian dance of African origin) as a form of advertising.30 The result was a failure. Brazilians thought that by adopting the samba it was very inconsistent with the "US brand image that it had worked so hard to cultivate."31 In the other hand, one franchise in Rio thought that the best option would be to invest in advertising only rather than lowering prices. He was successful. It worked better than for those who dropped the prices. Dropping the price increased the volume in the beginning but it ended up going back to previous level.32Adelaide de Almeida, a Brazilian physics professor, has had experiences with both: American and Brazilian Pizza Hut, she said: "I think that the Pizza Hut here in the US is much better than the one we used to have in the Mall in Ribeiro Preto."33 She proceeded: "Here they have a buffet with salads, spaghetti, and they have different sizes of pizza."34 The unit where Adelaide went once and never went back, went out of business in 1997. She says: "No wonder they went out of business, they had only one size of pizza (which was very small), they d...
