Selling Wine Cooler in Islamic Countries

The Case Study # 1: Selling wine cooler in Islamic countries: Is it the mission impossible?

Songsri is meeting the business consultant this morning. Her company is qualified to join the “Spread the sprouts: Thai SMEs to ASEAN markets” project by the Department of Export Promotion of Thailand which allowed her to enjoy the consulting services from profound university professors in international business free of charge. However, the condition is she has to pick up only one SKU among hundreds in her product lines. She is reluctant to choose between the traditional exotic fruit drink and the non-alcohol wine cooler: which one is the best to enter ASEAN market so that it could serve as springboard product to the Middle-East market, the company final goal of export.

The company

Bangkoknoi Pattana Winery was founded in 1999 to produce carbonated fruit juice and wine cooler. With the vision that Thailand is the land of fruits, and the oversupply produces from the farmers could be turned to more value-added product, Ms. Songsri, Managing Director, started to develop sparkling fruit juice. The company has set up its own research and development unit to develop new products and to test the final products to assure the international standard of their production. The research and development department is working well on developing new product and process, including extracting alcohol from wine cooler to 0 percent making it possible to produce non-alcohol wine cooler.

Wine cooler was introduced to Thailand by 1986 and shortly became popular among young people because the lower degree of alcohol. Influenced by Buddhist value, drinking alcohol is associated with being ‘bad’ in Thailand. Drinking and smoking are not regarded as good behaviors, especially when applied to women. However, drinking wine is interpreted as a means to good health, if not to celebrate in parties. In addition, wine cooler contains only 5 percent of alcohol thus is perceived as not-too-serious...