Critical Business Analysis of Highland Spring Bottled Water

Do you ever wonder about the origin story behind the brands that we use in our everyday lives? Well there is a story behind the founding of Deer Park Water Company. After the Civil War, the Deer Park Hotel was built in the Appalachian Mountains located in Maryland by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The hotel was created to attract those who took passage on the railroad, but the spring that was located nearby also caught the attention of the travelers. The spring was known for the appeal of a clean source of water, this led the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to start putting the water into bottles in 1873. It was known as the “Boiling Spring” because the water comes through sand on the way up. A company, known as The Boiling Spring Holding Corporation, purchased the spring and the woods surrounding it in 1966. The Boiling Spring Holding Corporation decided to put the spring to a use and made a profit bottling up the water and selling it mainly throughout the New York area, until production eventually expanded across the nation. Most of the water in the spring is located near the Appalachian Trail. Something interesting about the Deer Park Hotel is that President Taft and his wife had their honeymoon there. Deer Park Water Company is a sub-corporation of the Nestle Waters North America Company. Nestle Waters North America was founded in 1976 and started out importing Perrier Sparkling Water before moving on to include regular bottled water. At the time that the company was first

a. Size in sales: In 2001, bottled water was among the world’s most attractive beverage categories, with global sales exceeding 32 billion gallons and annual growth averaging nearly 9 percent between 1996 and 2001.

Note: You can assume that variable costs are constant so that the average of them is the variable cost relevant for a change in sales.

Is the great taste and convenience of bottled water worth the cost of the environmental damages it will cause in years to come? Most would say the cons of bottled water definitely outweigh the pros of bottled water and that everyone should drink tap water out of reusable containers. The answer seems obvious, but it is a simple issue. Bottled water is not worth the cost to the environment, but with some resourceful thinking, bottled water can be exempt from its environmental damages.

The Australian bottled water industry has been growing rapidly over the past decade. Many Australians drink bottled water on a regular basis, and on average consumed 21.2 litres per person (Australian Bureau of Statistics) in 2001. The boom in consumption of bottled water has moved the product beyond the niche market and into the mainstream as it has become a staple to many Australians. Many people drink bottled water today simply because they prefer the taste to that of tap water or perceive it to have more purity. Other reasons behind the explosion in bottled water consumption are: consumers' passion for fitness which guides them to fewer caloric beverages; increased accessibility of bottled water via convenience stores,

From helping the daily jogger stay hydrated during a run to that mom and family trying to stay hydrated at the amusement park, bottled water has had a lot of good to it. However do those goods outweigh the bad? In “Bottled Water: Friend or Foe?” by Christopher Castillo, Diana Goettsch, Angela Reid, and Catherine Sterling argue bottled water are our worst enemy, reasons being the bottle itself has harming chemicals within it which we are drinking, bottled water damages our environment, and lastly we are spending more on bottled water when we have the same water coming from our sinks.

In Peter Gleick’s “Selling Bottled Water: The Modern Medicine Show” and Cynthia Barnett’s “Business in a Bottle”, bottled water is argued to be an excessive commodity falsely advertised as healthier and more beneficial than tap water to society and the environment. Both authors discuss that bottled water is actually equivalent in quality to tap water and in some cases even more hazardous to the human body. Public water itself is a less expensive resource that is more accessible to the masses. However, due to fraudulent companies focused on profit and the lack of effective oversight, people are deterred from realizing that there does not need to be an alternative to municipal water. Gleick

Write linear equations to represent the costs for each company based on the number of pallets purchased.

Through Barnett and Gleick’s work, it is concluded that bottled water became popular due to the misleading advertising and pseudoscientific ideas, which targeted the eyes and emotions of the population; this simple trick allowed bottling companies to make a huge profit. As a sub-claim, Barnett illustrates how false advertising in labels attracts the population and plays a major role in the creation of the grandiose image of bottled water. Gleick’s grounds further expand and support Barnett’s sub-claim, however Gleick leans

According to the article “cision” “Nestle Waters North America Donates more than 1 million bottles of water to hurricane Harvey Relief.” That was only a portion of how much bottled water was donated to hurricane harvey survivors and bottled water isn’t just for natural disaster survivors. So the next time you think of getting rid of bottled water think of all the people whose lives you could save. Don’t ban bottled water.

In Flint, Michigan, residents had high levels of lead in their water. The problem arose when the budget cuts were being made by the city’s government to decrease the debt. The city switched to Flint River as their water source without testing the water for harmful substances. Many residents were having medical issues but government officials ignored them. Also, many families could not afford bottled water and had to keep using tap water. A pediatrician found the problem when they observed the result of blood tests from residents of the town. The city switched back to their original water but it was too late, the lead had already corroded the pipes. As parents began to get more worried for their children’s health the federal government

The idea of having clean, dependable water in a convenient, disposable bottle has been often the appeal of the bottled water franchise. They boast anything from being mineral infused and pure to untouched and filtered at the source. It is even believed that because of these claims, bottled water taste better than tap. It is assumed so wholeheartedly, in fact, that America is actually one of the top bottled water consumers in the world with a whopping ninety-one liters per person ("Top Bottled Water Consuming Countries, 2004."). In Tom Sandage’s article, “Bad to the Last Drop,” the

“One of the biggest challenges facing the bottled water industry is how to respond to the environmental claims levelled against it” (Grocer). Every time someone throws a bottle away, they have taken up more space in a landfill for the next four hundred fifty to one thousand years. Besides the long decomposition rate, water bottles are the cause of several more environmental issues. Overfilling landfills, health hazards caused by refilling, and the economic stresses due to the constant and inconvenient repurchasing are just a few of the negatives water bottles have on us. These plastic pollutants are doing more harm to both the environment and their users than good.

In contemporary society, bottled water consumption has become more attractive and popular. While in 2009 were only sold 161,589 million liters of bottled water, in 2011 approximately 181.61 million liters were sold all over the world (The Statistics Portal, 2014). In this context, attributing that significant growth of bottled water commercialization is consequence of a successful marketing should

Arnold, E 2006, ‘Bottled water drains natural resources’, Earth Policy Institute, 1 April , viewed 22 Octobe