Case study Nestle Pure Life Nestle has flown into another storm concerning its approach to marketing in the Third World. Bottled water has been one of the success stories of the past 20 years. Always popularin some European countries such as France and Italy, fears about contamination of water supplies coupled with rising affluence has resulted in exponential growth in the market in countries where previously people were perfectly happy to drink tap water. The growth in the world population, and consequently increasing pressure on freshwater supplies, means that tap water in many countries is either contaminated or (at best) tastes unpleasant owing to residues from the purification system. The problem for many of the firms in the industry has been the cost of purifying and bottling the water; traditional sources of mineral water, such as the Perrier springs, are inadequate to cope with the potential world supply. Nestles answer to the problem is to source the water in China, where bottling costs are low, and rather than use expensive spring water, to purify ordinary tap water. This renders the water safe to drink, but at a fraction of the overall cost of using spring or mineral water. Nestle initially entered the Asian market by buying out local brands. The company now owns over 50 local brands in Asia, and is lobbying governments in Pakistan, Ghana and the Philippines to allow foreign ownership of local companies: In some Asian countries, notably Thailand, the market has developed to the point where only the very poorest people would drink tap water; Nestle hopes to achieve a similar success in countries such as Pakistan, where the company»s Pure Life brand was launched in 1999. - Two months into the launch of the product, Nestle had won 60% of the Pakistani market for bottled water. Although the current projections for the