STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The bottled water industry in India is currently valued at more than $ 1.5 billion. The bottled
water industry is growing at rate of 18% CAGR and has attracted many players including
Pepsiand Coca Cola. The pioneer of the industry Parle Bisleri has grown over the years
andmaintained its top position. The bottled water industry consists of organized and
unorganized players. There are about 2000unorganized players which operate locally. The
industry is dynamic and the companies operates in hypercompetitive environment. The
strategic analysis of company like Parle Bisleri becomes very important in this situation. In
the present report we have done strategic analysis of ParleBisleri. We have used different
models for analysis purpose. We tried to analyze the different strategies adopted over the
years, the strategy development and have evaluated those strategies considering the external
environment and core competencies. We have found that the companyh as gained sustainable
competitive advantage through its brand, logistics and marketing. The company however
faces threat from its competitors as it is single product company. The company has adopted
expansion strategy to increase the reach and achieve operational efficiencies.
Water is the most important liquid in the world. Without water, there would be no life, at least
not the way we know it. In today's living condition, the need for Pure Drinking Water is
becoming the issue for the common Man.
Eighty percent of the human metabolism consists of water. This is the reason why 90% of
human diseases are water borne. There are 3 types of water impurities, which are root cause
of water borne diseases.
1. Microbiological-Bacteria / virus.
2. Dissolved impurities - chemical.
3. Imbalance of Mineral Content.

There are rapid changes that are taking place in our environment since long and the air and
the water pollution is on an increase. The main source of drinking water is river and
downstream which also have not been able to escape the pollution.
When a consumer became aware of the problems caused by water pollution the market saw
an advent of ceramic water filters, which filters the dust and suspended particles but
dissolved impurities and microbiological impurities are not cleared out. The mineral balance
is also not maintained.
1980's witnessed more changes by a tap attachment wherein Iodine resin is used to filter the
water. It deactivates microbiological impurities to an extent but has side effects due to iodine
and it does not take care of dissolved impurities mineral balance.
Late 1980's witnessed Ultra Violent based purifier, which filters dust and deactivates bacteria
to a great extent. It maintains the odor and color of water but does not clear out the dissolved
impurities and mineral particles. Thus came advent of mineral water.
Historically, the need for purified water within Indian homes had been kept down to a
minimum. Essentially, there were three types of water that was used for different purposes.
The first type was used for rinsing. The second type, which was used for cooking, was
cleaner and kept covered. The third type was the cleanest drinking water and was very
often boiled before use.
Since an average family needed a small quantity, not more than five or six liters a day, boiled
and filtered water had been a convenient solution for some time .The fallouts were obvious. It
was very difficult to convince the people that purification system was worth the price. There
was no visible way to demonstrate the benefit. The otherwise somnolent market began to
change once companies like Eureka Forbes targeted the office segment, while the mineral
water players went after travelers. Ion Exchange was the only company, which had any

measure of success in entering homes with Zero-B. But clean drinking water returned on the
national agenda a little later.
Around 1989, drinking water became an issue again.
Around early 1990s,Time did a story on India as a key emerging market and that was the
trigger for all the players eyeing this market.

OBJECTIVE
2.1

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

For any business venture, Marketing Strategy go hand in hand. Opportunities come and go
but business comes from the ones, which are handled properly in terms of leads. Leads for
any new opportunity are very important for it to turn out a profitable venture.

2.2

MANAGERIAL USEFULNESS OF THE STUDY

Helps to have sale experience

Helps to deal with different customers

Helps to overcome the objections of the customers

Helps to understand the problems of agents in a broader prospect

2.3

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

To study the market share of Bisleri in corporate sector

To study the factors that can lead to change in brand preference like quality, price,
service, etc.

Knowing brand equity of Bisleri in the corporate sector.

To study marketing strategies adopted by Bisleris.

To study the level of customer satisfaction in Bisleris.

To study the impact of Bisleris promotional schemes.

To Assess brand loyalty of consumers.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

1. Deep insights would give me the clear knowledge of strategies adopted and which would
make me a better marketing professional.
2. Important from a consultant prospective finding loopholes in marketing strategy of the
company if any.
3. Contribution to the institute and my fellow colleagues and a unique piece of work.
COMPANY NAME: BISLERI
COMPANY PROFILE
The origins of Bisleri lie in Italy, and the brand owes its name to founder Felice
Bisleri, an Italian entrepreneur. In 1967, Bisleri set up a plant in Mumbai for bottling
and marketing mineral water, which was first of its kind in India. However, it didnt
work well. Among other reasons, the fact that the Indian consumer was unprepared
to accept bottled mineral water was responsible for its failure. Consumer mindsets
were more geared towards boiling water at home.

In 1969, Parle bought over the Bisleri brand. In those days Bisleri water was
available in glass bottles. Parle's taking charge of Bisleri did not make a dramatic
difference to the brand's fortunes immediately. While it did gain in terms of visibility
and reach (piggybacking on Parle's existing distribution network), efforts to expand
the bottled water market were not exactly painstaking. Parle at that particular time
was interested in making soda water and not mineral water. There were just minor
initiatives on part of the company for making mineral water, as it was not considered
to be a very profitable business at that time as people still considered boiling water
to be a safer and better than mineral water. Moreover they were not ready to pay for a
commodity like water, which was so abundantly available.
In 1972-73 Parle changed the packaging of its bottled water to plastic bottles and that
significantly made a difference in the sales. The buyers, then, were mainly the upper
class - the trendy people.
In 1993, Coca-Cola bought Parles soft drink brands- Thumps-up, limca etc. While
Coca-Cola actually bought over Parle's beverages, it agreed to a settlement that allowed
the multinational to bottle and distribute Bisleri soda for a time frame of five years. The
charge of Bisleri water, however, remained with Parle. The upsurge in the sales of
Bisleri started from this point as Parle sold off its stable of brands to Coca-Cola. This
was the time when it started concentrating on making Bisleri a success in the domestic
mineral water market. The reason why Parle chose to retain the Bisleri name was that
Parle saw a fairly lucrative business of mineral water in Bisleri's equity.
The real shift in companys policy towards mineral water industry came in
1998,although the conscious efforts had already been started in 1994. This change was
primarily because of the fact that the people, at this time, had started becoming more
health conscious.

BISLERI was bought from the Italian company, Felice Bisleri, in 1969 and then the
journey began. But the company had been unable to market bottled water and wanted to exit
the market they did not see any potential for the product at that time.
As a soft drinks company, it had Thumps Up, Gold Spot and Limca (cola, orange drink and
lemonade) but no soft drink company was complete without a soda. So it merely used the
name and launched Bisleri soda with two variants -- carbonated and non-carbonated mineral
water.
But three decades ago, what could one say about a category that had no market? They didn't
know their target group. Then, since bottled water is colorless, tasteless and odourless, it was
not an easy product to advertise.
Thus, the earlier brand building efforts focused on Bisleri being healthy with adequate
minerals. The Italian name added a dash of class to it. The first print ad campaign captured
the international and showed a butler with a bow tie, holding two bottles of Bisleri.
The punch line was, "Bisleri is very very extraordinary" (the spelling of the punch line was
designed to capture the consumer's attention). The campaign was successful and bisleri was
being noticed as someone who catered to the need for safe, healthy drinking water.
However, the real boost to mineral water came in the early-to-mid-1980s when it switched to
PVC packaging and later to PET bottles. The PET packaging did not just ensure better
transparency it could now show sparkling clear water to the consumers. It also meant better
life for the water.
Meanwhile, Bisleri soda was doing well but it had to discontinue production as it sold its soft
drink brands to Coca-Cola in 1993. But Mr. Chuahans interest was in building brands and
not in bottling soft drinks. That's when he started to concentrate on developing the Bisleri
water brand.

There was a clear opportunity of building a market for bottled water. The quality of water
available in the country was bad. It was similar to what Europe faced before World War II.
The quality of water in Europe was extremely poor, which created the bottled water industry
there. In India, too, not only was water scarce, whatever was available was of bad quality.
Initially, though bottled water was something only foreigners and non-resident Indians
consumed, it still had to increase the distribution, which meant the dealer margins reduced.
And because of limited sales, the dealer margin had to be kept high to compensate low sales.
Now it had to push sales.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
MODE OF SURVEY
The mode of survey was personal interview with the respondents during the filling up of the
questionnaires.

PRIMARY DATA
Primary data is that kind of data which is collected directly by the investigator himself for the
purpose of the specific study. Primary Data is collected by the investigator through interviews
of company employees, vendors, distributor etc. Data such collected is original in character.
The advantage of this method of collection is the authentic. A questionnaire was made and it
was given to the dealers to fill it up for our research. The research was a kind of conclusive
research as it helps in the testing of hypothesis. The method of sampling was the Random
method as it is unbiased.

SECONDARY DATA
When an investigator uses the data that has been already collected by others, is called
secondary data. The secondary data could be collected from Journals, Reports, libraries,
magazines, fair & conference and other publications. The advantages of the secondary data
can be It is economical, both in terms of money and time spent .The researcher of the report
also did the same and collected secondary data from various internet sites like
www.google.com, and many more. The researcher of the report also visited various libraries
for collection of the introduction part.

RESEARCH DESIGN
The research is based on the information collected by the help of the questionnaires filled.
The first three questions aim at the basic introductory information of the organization and the
person being interviewed thus rendering the follow up work easier. The fourth question is
about the financial standing of an organization, it gives an idea about the financial status of
the society being approached. The fifth question aims at generating information about the
various sources of funds of the societies. The sixth and seventh questions deal about the
financial performance of the societies. The eighth question is to find out about what a society
does with the surplus amount generated by them. The ninth question is meant to gather
information about the people who are instrumental in advising and putting to action the
investment plans for the society. The tenth question is about what kind of investments are
preferred by the society, on the basis of the organization or on the basis of the time period.
The eleventh question talks about the institutions in which the societies make their
investments in, say the banks or other institutes. The twelfth question tries to assess what is it

exactly that the societies look for, while investing. For example do they prefer a high rate of
interest, or safety, or location, etc..
Thus the research is based only on the basis of the information gathered with the help of the
questionnaires.

Bisleri is pioneer in the packaged water industry & is even the first entrant in this sector. The
organization wanted to know its share & its popularity in the corporate sector.
The purpose of methodology section in the report making is to describe the research process
that is followed while doing the main part. This would however include the research design,
the sampling procedure, and the data collection method. This section is perhaps difficult to
write as it would also involve some technical terms and may be much of the audience will nor
be able to understand the terminology used. The methodology followed by the researcher,
during the preparation of the report was:
RESEARCH INSTRUMENT
For doing the survey research, structured questionnaire with both open-ended and closedended questions was used.

QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN
We make questionnaire to know which category of people opts for which kind of plans. In
this category the factors included are such as income, background, age, etc. This includes 2
types of questions
1. open ended
2. closed ended

3. open ended : In this respondents are not bounded to answer within a set of choices and
can give their own views
4. Close-ended: in this respondents are bounded to answer within a set of choices.

I have designed my questionnaire on the basis of close-ended questions as it is more feasible

to calculate data from it.

SAMPLE DESIGN:
While developing a sample design, following points should be kept in mind:

Sampling unit: A decision has to be taken concerning a sampling unit before selecting
sample. Sampling unit may be a geographical one such as state, district, village etc or a
construction unit such as house, flat etc. or it ,may be as social unit such as family, club,
school etc or it may be an individual . the researcher will have to decide one or more of
such units that he has to select for his study

Size of the sample: This refers to the number of items to be selected from the universe to
constitute a sample. This is a major problem before a researcher. The size of the sample
should be neither is excessively large, nor too small. it should be optimum
An optimum sample is one which fulfills the requirements of efficiency, representatives,

reliability and flexibility

Sample element and sample unit
sample unit - 100 customers have been interviewed to know their opinion.
Extent- Delhi

Sampling Type Average Method technique

Sampling frame: 100 People.
Sampling Type - Probability sampling
How should the respondent be chosen? In the Probability sampling is done on basis of
Probability sampling . Among the probability sampling design the sampling design chosen is
stratified random sampling. Because in this survey I had stratified the sample in different age
group, different gender and different profesion
REFERENCES
BOOKS
Marketing Management,Philip Kotler, Pearson Education 2nd ed.
Consumer Behavior,G.Schiffman Leon, Prentice-Hall India 8th ed.
Marketing Management, Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller Pearson Education
4th ed.
NEWS PAPERS
Economic Times, June, 2008
Financial Express, July, 2008
Times of India , June, 2008
Indian Express , July, 2008
MAGAZINES
Business Today, Ed. 2008
A & M, Ed. 2008
Business India, Ed. 2008
Business World, Ed. 2008
Business Standard, Ed. 2008

INTERNET
http://www.bisleri.com
http://www.science&environment.com
http://www.blonnet.com
.infochangeindia.org56SS