Comparing the success of two joint ventures in the ready to drink tea market: implications for alliance management theory

Abstract

Joint ventures are a very popular type of alliance and can offer a lot of advantages. Yet they can be a hand full to manage and many joint ventures fail to properly achieve their objectives. Since Unilever and PepsiCo agreed to help me on this final paper, I was in a unique position to thoroughly scrutinize their joint venture, called PLI, which manufactures and sells Lipton Ice Tea. The reason why this was such an instructive experience is because there is another almost identical joint venture, called BPW, which started out very similarly but has known a lot more difficulties than PLI. BPW manufactures and sells Nestea and is a joint venture of Nestlé and The Coca-Cola Company. By doing a comparative case study on these two joint ventures I was able to uncover which factors are truly important for joint ventures to succeed. The research question of this thesis is as follows: "What are the critical factors driving the success of the Unilever and PepsiCo joint venture, PLI, and what are the main reasons behind the collapse of the Nestlé and The Coca-Cola Company joint venture, BPW?"