Taking a Look at the Ribena Controversy - 1545 Words

The Ribena Controversy An issue is defined by Regester and Larkin (2002) as an internal or external event that will have a substantial effect on the organisation’s functions, performance, or interests. Furthermore, Issue development usually follow a predictable pattern (Meng, 2009). Ribena was confronted by an issue when two school girls managed to invalidate its long standing claim. Anna Devathasan and Jenny Suo, both were 14 year old students in Pakuranga College in Auckland New Zealand, tested the claim of Ribena’s RTD variety on its high Vitamin C content and found it untrue. With a test hypothesis of cheaper brands were less healthy, they have concluded based on their findings that Ribena RTD contain less Vitamin C compared to their cheaper rival brands (Vasagar, 2007). The girls trigged a series of events that led to GSK pleading guilty of breaching the Fair Trading Act to the New Zealand Commerce Commission (Regester and Larkin et al., 2008). A year after, the intensity of the issue di ed down but Ribena’s â€Å"breach of trust† is still in the mind of Australasian consumers. Ribena sales dropped by 12%. By this time, Ribena and parent company GSK should have realized that their system have weak spots that needs to be analysed and refined not only to prevent a similar crisis from happening again, but also to assure stakeholders that GSK is putting in the effort needed to continually improve. Clearly this did not happen given the fact that similar crises (e.g. 2012 Paxil