Sofa Wars Essays - Patent Medicines, Coca-Cola, Kosher Food, Pepsi

Sofa Wars Essays - Patent Medicines, Coca-Cola, Kosher Food, Pepsi Sofa Wars The soft-drink battleground has now turned toward new overseas markets. While once the United States, Australia, Japan, and Western Europe were the dominant soft-drink markets, the growth has slowed down dramatically, but they are still important markets for Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Globalization has become an important word in the 90?s and Eastern Europe, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia, and India have become the new "hot spots." Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi are forming joint bottling ventures in these nations and in other areas where they see growth potential. As we have seen in the Japanese video dealing with Coke?s business in class, international marketing can be very complex. As I begin to examine the international soda wars this will become very evident. The domestic cola war between Coca-Cola and Pepsi is still raging, as we clearly know. However, these two soft-drink giants also recognize the opportunities for globalization in many of the international markets. Both! Coca-Cola, which sold 10 billion cases of soft-drinks in 1992, and Pepsi now find themselves asking, "Where will sales of the next 10 billion cases come from?" The answer lies overseas, where income levels and appetites for Western products are at an all time high. Often, the company that gets into a foreign market first usually dominates that country's market. Coke patriarch Robert Woodruff realized this 50 years ago and unleashed a brilliant ploy or in a way a very simple global strategyto make Coke the early bird in many of the major foreign markets. At the height of World War II, Woodruff proclaimed that ?Wherever American boys were fighting, they'd be able to get a [emailprotected] By the time Pepsi tried to make its first international pitch in the 50s, Coke had already established its brand name and a powerful distribution network. During the last 40 years, many new markets have emerged. In order to profit from these markets, both Coke and Pepsi need to find ways to cut through all of the red tape that initially prevents them from conducting business in these markets. One key movement for the soda wars occurd in Europe in 1972, Pepsi signed an agreement with the Soviet Union which made it the first Western product to be sold to consumers in Russia. This landmark agreement gave Pepsi the first advantage. Presently, Pepsi has 23 plants in the former Soviet Union and is the leader in the soft-drink industry in Russia. Pepsi outsells Coca-Cola by 6 to 1 and is seen as a local brand, similar to Coke?s reputation in Japan. However, Pepsi has also had some problems. There has not been an increase in brand loyalty for Pepsi since its advertising blitz in Russia, even though it has produced commercials tailored to the Russian market and has sponsored television concerts. On the positive side, Pepsi may be leading Coca-Cola due to the big difference in price between the two colas. While Pepsi sells for Rb250 (25 cents) a bottle, Coca-Cola sells for Rb450. For the economy size, Pepsi sells 2 liters for Rb1,300, but Coca-Cola sells 1.5 liters fo! r Rb1,800. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, only moved into Russia 2 years ago and is manufactured locally in Moscow and St. Petersburg under a license. Despite investing $85 million in these two bottling plants, they do not perceive Coca-Cola as a premium brand in the Russian market. Moreover, they see it as a "foreign" brand in Russia. Lastly, while Coca-Cola's bottle and label give it a high-class image, it is unable to capture market share. Another country in the hot battleground for Coca-Cola and Pepsi is Romania. When Pepsi established a bottling plant in Romania in 1965, it became the first US product produced and sold in the region. Pepsi began producing locally during the communist period and has recently decided to reformat its organization structure and retrain its local staff. Pepsi entered into a joint venture with a local firm, Flora and Quadrant, for its Bucharest plant, and has 5 other factories in Romania. Quadrant leases Pepsi the equipment and handles Pepsi's distribution. In addition, Pepsi bought 500 Romanian trucks which are also used for distribution in other countries. Moreover, Pepsi produces its bottles locally through an investment in the glass

Inca Star Worship and Constellations

Inca Star Worship and Constellations The stars in the sky were very important to the religion of the Inca. They identified constellations and individual stars and assigned them a purpose. According to the Inca, many of the stars were there to protect animals: every animal had a corresponding star or constellation which would look out for it. Today, traditional Quechua communities still see the same constellations in the sky as they did centuries ago. Inca Culture and Religion The Inca culture thrived in the Andes Mountains in western South America from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. Although they started out as one ethnic group among many in the region, they embarked upon a campaign of conquest and assimilation and by the fifteenth century, they had achieved pre-eminence in the Andes and controlled an empire which stretched from present-day Colombia to Chile. Their religion was complicated. They had a pantheon of greater gods which included Viracocha, the creator, Inti, the Sun, and Chuqui Illa, the thunder god. They also worshiped huacas, which were spirits which could inhabit just about any remarkable phenomenon, such as a waterfall, large boulder or tree. The Inca and the Stars The sky was very important to the Inca culture. The sun and moon were considered gods and temples and pillars were laid out specifically so that heavenly bodies such as the sun would pass over pillars or through windows on certain days, such as the summer solstice. The stars played an important role in Inca cosmology. The Inca believed that Viracocha had planned for the protection of all living things, and that to each star corresponded a particular sort of animal or bird. The star grouping known as the Pleiades held particular influence over the lives of animals and birds. This group of stars was not considered a greater god but rather a huaca, and Inca shamans would regularly make sacrifices to it. Inca Constellations Like many other cultures, the Inca grouped the stars into constellations. They saw many animals and other things from their daily lives when they looked to the stars. There were two sorts of constellations for the Inca. The first are of the common variety, where groupings of stars are linked in connect-the-dots fashion to make images of gods, animals, heroes, etc. The Inca saw some such constellations in the sky but considered them inanimate. The other constellations were seen in the absence of stars: these dark blotches on the Milky Way were seen as animals and were considered living or animate. They lived in the Milky Way, which was considered a river. The Inca were one of the very few cultures who found their constellations in the absence of stars. Mach’acuay: The Serpent One of the major dark constellations was Machacuay, the Serpent. Although snakes are rare at the high altitudes where the Inca Empire thrived, there are a few, and the Amazon River basin is not far away to the east. The Inca saw serpents as highly mythological animals: rainbows were said to be serpents named amarus. Machacuay was said to oversee all snakes on Earth, protecting them and helping them procreate. The constellation Machacuay is a wavy dark band located on the Milky Way between Canis Major and the Southern Cross. The constellation serpent emerges head-first in the Inca region in August and begins to set in February: Interestingly, this mirrors the activity of real snakes in the zone, which are more active during the Andean rainy season of December to February. Hanp’atu: The Toad In a somewhat surprising twist on nature, Hanpatu the Toad chases Machacuay the Serpent out of the Earth in August as that segment of the Milky Way becomes visible in Peru. Hanpatu is seen in a lumpish dark cloud between Machacuays tail and the Southern Cross. Like the snake, the toad was an important animal to the Inca. The nocturnal croaking and chirping of frogs and toads were listened to attentively by Inca diviners, who believed that the more these amphibians croaked, the more likely it was to rain soon. Also like the snakes, the Andean toads are more active during the rainy season; in addition, they croak more at night when their constellation is visible in the sky. Hanpatu also had the added significance that his appearance in the night sky coincided with the beginning of the Inca agricultural cycle: when he showed up, it meant that the time to plant had come. Yutu: The Tinamou Tinamous are clumsy ground birds similar to partridges, common in the Andean region. Located at the base of the Southern Cross, Yutu is the next dark constellation to emerge as the Milky Way becomes visible in the night sky. Yutu is a dark, kite-shaped spot which corresponds to the Coal Sack Nebula. It chases Hanpatu, which makes some sense because tinamous are known to eat small frogs and lizards. The tinamou may have been selected (as opposed to any other bird) because it exhibits remarkable social behavior: male tinamous attract and mate with females, who lay their eggs in his nest before leaving to repeat the process with another male. Males, therefore, incubate the eggs, which could come from 2 to 5 mating partners. Urcuchillay: The Llama The next constellation to emerge is the llama, perhaps the most important of the constellations to the Inca. Although the llama is a dark constellation, the stars Alpha and Beta Centauri serve as its â€Å"eyes† and are the first to emerge when the llama rises in November. The constellation consists of two llamas, a mother, and a baby. Llamas were of great importance to the Inca: they were food, beasts of burden and sacrifices to the gods. These sacrifices often took place at certain times with astronomical significance such as equinoxes and solstices. Llama herders were particularly attentive to the movements of the celestial llama and offered it sacrifices. Atoq: The Fox The fox is a small black splotch at the feet of the llama: this is appropriate because Andean foxes eat baby vicuà ±as. When they foxes come by, however, the adult vicuà ±as gang up and attempt to trample the foxes to death. This constellation has a connection to earthly foxes: the Sun passes through the constellation in December, the time when baby foxes are born. Significance of Inca Star Worship The Inca constellations and their worship - or at least a certain respect for them and an understanding of their role in the agricultural cycle - are one of few aspects of Inca culture that survived the conquest, colonial era and 500 years of forced assimilation. The original Spanish chroniclers mentioned the constellations and their importance, but not in any great detail: fortunately, modern researchers have been able to fill in the gaps by making friends and doing fieldwork in rural, traditional Andean Quechua communities where people still see the same constellations their ancestors saw centuries ago. The nature of Inca reverence for their dark constellations reveals much about Inca culture and religion. To the Inca, everything was connected: The universe of the Quechuas is not composed of a series of discrete phenomena and events, but rather there is a powerful synthetic principle underlying the perception and ordering of objects and events in the physical environment. (Urton 126). The snake in the sky had the same cycle as earthly snakes and lived in a certain harmony with the other celestial animals. Consider this in contrast to traditional western constellations, which were a series of images (scorpion, hunter, scales, etc) that really didnt interact with one another or events here on Earth (except for vague fortunetelling). Sources Cobo, Bernabà ©. (translated by Roland Hamilton) Inca Religion and Customs. Austin: the University of Texas Press, 1990.Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro. (translated by Sir Clement Markham). History of the Incas. 1907. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999.Urton, Gary. Animals and Astronomy in the Quechua Universe. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. 125, No. 2. (April 30, 1981). P. 110-127.