Unilever: Ben and Jerry America
Similar Issues: Ben and Jerry an ice cream company in America are having financial difficulties and have been bought over by Unilever of London and Rotterdam, a globally international company. Ben and Jerry had annual sales worldwide worth $200 million. Ben and Jerry are a company committed to paying their employees a “livable wage” and providing top-quality benefits, as well as purchasing supplies from other socially responsible companies. The company has international sales in Europe, the Mideast and Asia. The company is widely known for its good reputation as well as helping the society by supporting charity through their profits. Ben and Jerry’s strategic plans were aimed towards customers and giving them exactly what they want whether it’s fat free ice cream or fat full ice cream. Their business was the satisfaction of the customer. When Unilever bought over the company, of course organizational cultures collided and there were conflicts in missions and goals that Ben and Jerry had already created.
Global Communications is a telecommunications company in trouble financially. One because there is too much competition in the telecommunications market and they are finding it difficult to put up with that competition because instead of their company doing better, it is failing and they are wasting valuable resources trying to stay open. They came up with two aggressive methods of trying to salvage what was left of company and one of them involved marketing themselves more aggressively in the international market and cutting costs in whatever means possible.
Company Response: Unilever went ahead in November 2000 and hired Yves Couette as Ben and Jerry’s CEO and he vowed to build on Ben and Jerry’s social mission which involved the company giving away 7.5% of its pre-tax profits to charity. This is part of what got them in trouble in the first place. His plans did not go as Ben and Jerry wanted and that caused problems for...