Title: Branding of Fiji's bottled water: edging into sustainable consumption

Authors: Mahendra Reddy, Gurmeet Singh

Addresses: Faculty of Economics, Fiji Institute of Technology, Suva, Fiji. ' School of Management and Public Administration, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji

Abstract: Small developing economies are struggling to achieve the economic growth rates required to provide a decent standard of living to their population. For them to survive in an increasingly competitive global economy, they will have to differentiate their products by targeting issues which the consumers in the global market are quite responsive to. In this paper, we argue that Fiji bottled water exporters have successively marketed their products by exploiting the sustainable dimension of consumption, given the widespread concern for it in high-income countries. We argue that the branding of these products has been in relation to health, environment and lifestyle issues. We further demonstrate that the sustainable consumption dimension of branding has been enhanced thanks to the remoteness and exoticised small-island nature of Fiji.

Keywords: branding; sustainable consumption; small economies; islands; Fiji; bottled water; entrepreneurship; small business; island brands; sustainability; exports; health issues; environment issues; lifestyle issues.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2010.032404

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2010 Vol.9 No.4, pp.447 - 462

Published online: 02 Apr 2010 *

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