Business Studies

Prior to beginning work on this discussion, you must locate and read two articles about the marketing battle between Anheuser-Busch and Budejovicky Budvar.

One company is from the United States and the other is from Europe. Discuss the difficulties that both faced in operating in international markets. How might leadership from both companies been able to avoid some of the difficulties that you discovered? Discuss two lessons that you learned from the articles about entering your business into international markets.

ANSWER

Week 6 – Discussion Forum 1

The conflict between Anheuser-Busch and Budejovicky Budvar companies over trademark on naming issues has existed for a century. Budejovicky Budvar has retained the right to use the name Budweiser making it difficult for Anheuser-Busch to operate in Europe. Anheuser-Busch has faced issues, especially in Europe, because of the issue with their trademark. The American company, which controls 45% of the US beer market and 8.5% of the world market sales, feared its finances were under threat, and it also faced issues with international marketing (Alberts, 2020). The adverting business of America’s Budweiser is bigger than Czech’s entire annual revenue. The problem they are facing at the moment is the confusion of the beer drinkers of Europe as one company could take advantage of the advertising of the other company to make sales, especially in Europe. Czech’s Budvar is suing for the right to remain with the name Budweiser like France has retained the name champagne.

The trademark issue had both companies having issues operating internationally as in countries such as Switzerland, Anheuser-Busch could not sell under the Bud flagship, and neither could Budvar in Denmark. The leadership could have been able to avoid these problems if they had dealt with the trademark issue in the past (Austin, 2016). They should have had discussions, and maybe the Czech company could have been willing to sell the trademark to the American company. They could also have agreed to merge the companies so that they could operate internationally under one brand. The two lessons gotten from this conflict are that it is important to secure a trademark, especially when going international. It is also important to do comprehensive research on the company’s name and slogan to avoid being sued or another company taking advantage of the similarities in the names.

References

Alberts, W. (2020). Trade Mark Conflicts: Honest Concurrent Use Is Alive and Well. THRHR, 83, 260.

Austin, G. W. (2016). The consumer in cross-border passing off cases. Victoria U. Wellington L. Rev., 47, 209.