Saudi market by the year 2000.Coca-Cola, which plans to pour over $100 million into the Saudi market, isfocusing on marketing to get there. Recently, it shipped some 20,000 redcoolers into Saudi Arabia over the last 9 months. Also, Coca-Cola put $1million into sponsoring the Saudi World Cup soccer team. This alone hasdoubled Coca-Cola's market share to almost 15%. America's Reynolds Company isamong the investors looking to cash in on Coca-Cola's return to Saudi Arabia.The company is among the investors in a new factory which, by 1996, will beproducing 1.2 billion Coca-Cola cans per year. This equates to nearly 100cans for every Saudi in the country. Pepsi, trying to fight off the Coca-Colaonslaught, has responded with deep discounting. Coke and Pepsi in India:Coca-Cola controlled the Indian market until 1977, when the Janata Party beatthe Congress Party of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. To punishCoca-Cola's principal bottler, a Congress Party stalwart and longtime Gandhisupporter, the Janata government demanded that Coca-Cola transfer its syrupformula to an Indian subsidiary (Chakravarty, 43). Coca-Cola balked andwithdrew from the country. India, now left without both Coca-Cola and Pepsi,became a protected market. In the meantime, India's two largest soft-drinkproducers have gotten rich and lazy while controlling 80% of the Indianmarket. These domestic producers have little incentive to expand their plantsor develop the country's potentially enormous market (Chakravarty, 43). Someanalysts reason that the Indian market may be more lucrative than the Chinesemarket. India has 850 million potential customers, 150 million of whomcomprise the middle class, with disposable income to spend on cars, VCRs, andcomputers. The Indian middle class is growing at 10% per year. To obtain thelicense for India, Pepsi had to export $5 of locally-made products for every$1 of materials it imported, and it had to agree to help the Indiangovernment to ini...
