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Diageo Case Study

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Born in 1997, Diageo was a product of merger between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan. Guinness and Grand Metropolitan were also products of mergers. Guinness acquired Distillers in 1986 and Grand Metropolitan had expanded from its roots as a hotel business into spirits, Pillsbury, Burger King and various pubs. After the merger, Diageo’s new CEO, John McGrath and executive teams had a vision to create a more focused strategy, concentrating on their core strengths, and integrate the company fully into the global spirits organization, and sold off all non-beverage conglomerates. The purpose of all the vicissitudes was to position the company to meet their vision of becoming the world’s leading premium Drinks Company. During the post-merger integration, Mr. McGrath concentrated on the core competencies and the ability to build a premium consumer brand, leveraging it on a global basis. The strategy they created was to implement company wide – the “Diageo way of brand building”. This way of working provided a guide line on conducting business based on perceptions of its stakeholders’ and customers’ needs. From there, Diageo developed an inimitable business structure in which country operations were organized leveraging its core competencies and competitive advantages. Recently, in 2015 Diageo took another step towards focusing on its core business and competencies, and sold off their wine business. In the alcohol industry wine is a very competitive business, and within

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