Pascual Boing - Marketing and Distribution

Marketing and Distribution

Most of Pascuals’ products are marketed on the Boing!, Pascual and Lulú brands. While its products can be found in all of Mexico, distribution is concentrated in the center and northeast of the country, with the Mexico City area accounting for sixty percent of sales. There are a total of 1048 distribution centers. It has 19 wholly owned distributors along with 27 major independent distributors in Acapulco, Aguascalientes, Mexico City, Ciudad Madero, Cuernavaca, Guadalajara, Iguala, León, Monterrey, Morelia, Pachuca, Poza Rica, Puebla, Querétaro, Río Blanco, San Luis Potosí and Toluca . In the center of the country, Pascual products are widely found in smaller grocery stores, restaurants and semi-fixed street stands, which account for about half of its sales. Delivery of products is mostly handled by an outside cooperative of truckers.

Pascual Boing is a major exporter of soft drinks in Mexico along with Arca. In 2008, the exported about 1.5 million of the 50 million cases of beverages it produced. It exports to the U.S., Canada, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago, with exports to China and South America beginning in 2012.

Its largest export market is the United States, concentrated in Texas, Chicago, North Carolina, Florida and California, where it targets the Hispanic market looking for something from home. As of 2011, sales were about 150,000 cases. NAFTA has helped with the lowering of tariffs, making the products more competitive. Pascual Boing began in small Hispanic groceries and is working to expand into major supermarkets but this has been difficult because it does not spend as much on marketing as other soft drink producers. However, the US export market is growing and in the 2000s it began constructing facilities in border areas in order to facilitate export to the United States.

Much of the push to develop foreign markets for Pascual Boing products has come from competition inside Mexico from multinational companies. Pascual Boing has accused makers such as Coca Cola and Pepsi of monopolistic practices aimed at excluding the Mexican bottlers from retail venues such as small groceries, school cafeterias and public events. Pascual Boing used to have a fifty percent share in Mexico but this has shrunk to fifteen percent. Today, Coca Cola and its bottlers control over 75% f the Mexican soft drink market. Pascual Boing accuses Coca Cola and Pepsi of making outlets sign exclusivity agreements, so that they cannot sell Pascual products. For example, Pascual is excluded from about twenty percent of school campuses in the state of Hidalgo. In 2010, Pascual workers closed the Mexico City-Pachuca highway to demand that federal and state authorities do something against these tactics.