The Coca-Cola Company's European Crisis

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the Coca Cola crisis in Belgium, when school children became ill from drinking Coca Cola and thus began a corporate nightmare in which the company performed a textbook example of how not to handle a crisis. This paper traces the Coca-Cola company's handling of the crisis and concludes with a suggested revision of how it should have been handled.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Coca-Cola Background
Missteps
Positive Steps
A Better Way to Handle the Crisis
No Apparent Crisis Response Plan
Speed of Response
Accuracy of Response
Focus of Response
Tone of the Response
Credibility of the Response

From the Paper:

"Coca Cola's apparent reaction was to investigate rapidly what could have caused the contamination. The investigation centered on the two Coca-Cola bottling plants in Belgium, which are owned by Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. (CCE.N), the largest bottler of Coke products in the world, a company which is 40 percent owned by the Coca-Cola Company. By Tuesday, June 15, company investigators working with French and Belgian authorities reported that there was a belief that faulty carbon dioxide at Coke's factory in Antwerp, Belgium and fungicide on pallets used to transport the drinks from Dunkirk to Belgium may have contaminated the drinks in question."

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