Coca-Cola India's response to pesticide contamination allegations

Coca-Cola India Case Study

One of the most popular and recognized brands across the planet is Coca-Cola; with it's products available virtually anywhere in the world. Beginning in the 1970's Coca-cola had been attempting to make inroads into the markets of India. Just at a time when Coca-Cola seemed to be making significant progress, they were hit by a calamitous revelation. On August 6, 2003, the Center for Science and Environment, an Indian non-governmental environmental organization, made public charges that they had discovered pesticides in many popular soft drinks, including Coca-Cola. (Vedwan) by the end of August 2003, the Indian government created a Joint Parliamentary Committee to look into the allegations. Coke immediately joined forces with Pepsi, Coke's main rival and who also was defending charges of pesticide contamination in it's products, in a number of responses. Together the soft drink giants attacked the CSE's credibility as well as their testing methods, released their own lab results which determined there was no contamination, petitioned the Delhi High Court to challenge the CSE's findings, and threatened to sued. Despite protests and denials by Coca-Cola, and other international soft drink companies, the Indian public in general believed these allegations and as a result sales of Coca-Cola plummeted.

In response to this Coke India CEO Sanjiv Gupta initiated a number of policy changes designed to counter the allegations that Coca-Cola products were unsafe. Firstly, Gupta knew that the public has a short memory and the CSE report would eventually fade from memory. So he immediately began to communicate with the government, media, employees, and even the CSE in order to discover the cause of the contamination. Coca-Cola then partnered with environmental groups to enact changes which would ensure that something like this never happened again. Sanjiv Gupta demonstrated publicly that Coke India's production was transparent and safe, slowly regaining the public's confidence. And finally, Coke India changed it's image, focusing on demonstrating that it was a socially responsible company which was involved in the local communities. (Olsen) One of Coca-Cola India's community projects was the "Elixir of Life Project," which brought clean water into 100 schools benefiting more than 30,000 children, and earned Coca-Cola India 2008's Golden Peacock Award. (Muruganantham).

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