SOFT DRINK MARKETING

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28906, 28 May 1959, Page 15

SOFT DRINK MARKETING

Plans For U.S.

Beverage

Marketing his company’s soft drink on a national scale in the United States by the end of next year and then marketing it in other countries is the aim of an American who arrived in Christchurch with his wife yesterday on a tourist trip around New Zealand. He is Mr Wesby R. Parker, president of the Dr. Pepper Company, of ballas, Texas. His company’s soft drink—known as Dr. Pepper —sold in fourth place in the United States, behind two inter-nationally-known drinks. Coca Cola and * Pepsi Cola, and a national beverage, 7-Up, he said. Mr Parker said Dr. Pepper sold mainly in the “Bible Belt” southern states, but he hoped to have it selling on a national scale by the end of next year—the company’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Then he hopes the company will move into other countries “Where

we sell it first depends on language, culture and consumption.” In time the company’s operations would take in Australia and New Zealand.

“This is a good soft drink country, but you get somewhere like Tahiti and that is a very good soft drink country.” 'He described his company’s present operations in Tangier. Thailand, Honolulu and the Philippines as “happenstance.” It was almost a mail order business, he said. His national and international ambitions for his company are a purely personal goal. Before joining Dr. Pepper he had spent his life in food marketing.

Yesterday he spent part of the day taking a look at the selling and advertising of soft drinks that are his company’s rivals in the United States. “I talked to a traveller and some truck drivers just to see how they go about it here.”

He said soft drink selling in the United States “runs the whole gamut of promotional devices.”

Mr and Mrs Parker call their visit to New Zealand a “vacational cruise.” They will visit most