Procter & Gamble, maker of Tide detergent and dozens of other leading household and personal products – Pampers, Crest, Pantene, Olay, to name a few – was one of the first and most successful Western companies to operate in Russia when it opened for free-market business two decades ago. Here is the story of how P&G swept across the vast Russian landscape with its brands. How it achieved this success and the key factors that made it possible are a tribute to P&G’s outstanding people and partners and a valuable lesson to any business involved in entering an emerging market today.
The reader gets a good sense of what it must have been like to be on the front line, making decisions about whether and how to enter the Russian market. Even so-called experts did not know how tough it would be for Westerners to set up a business in Russia, and how even the simplest thing could be a nightmare. As those companies that failed and/or lost a lot of their investment discovered, the learning curve was very steep and the outcome always unpredictable. P&G showed, though, that it could be done if approached properly. The fact that the story is told from the P&G perspective is what makes it valuable, since we get a sense of how things seemed to the main players and how their strategies were developed.
T. Anthony Jones ― Vice President and Executive Director, The Gorbachev Foundation of North America Professor of Sociology, Northeastern University
This book is a “must read” for all students of global business management. This is an impressive saga about P&G’s entrance into and expansion in the Russian market. John Pepper presents a unique case study on the major success of a leading global company in one of the BRIC countries. His explanation of P&G’s growth in Russia over the past two decades of its dramatic transition from socialism to a market economy is full of great examples of innovative decisions and persistence in building from scratch a strong organization. P&G Russia prospered due to the great respect of John Pepper and other P&G leaders for Russia’s people, history and culture.
We at St. Petersburg University Graduate School of Management are proud to have been part of this success story.
Professor Valery Katkalo ― Vice-Rector, St.Petersburg University, and Dean, Graduate School of Management