Was watching a special on CNBC on Marriott and was shocked to learn that Marriott doesn’t actually own many hotels. Rather Real Estate Investment Trusts and other companies own the hotels and pay Marriott to manage them!
That reminded me of two shocking about two product ownership flow charts I have seen:
Who actually owns Common House Hold Products?
You’ll most likely need to click to enlarge the picture:
It is almost like you literally can’t avoid buying from a certain company. For example lets say you don’t like “Dove” because they club baby seals (disclaimer: Dove doesn’t club baby seals) so you buy Axe body wash…it doesn’t matter! You still provided Unilever with money.
You could buy stock in these 10 parent companies and basically own every consumer good in existence!
* I am not sure who created this flow chart so I can’t give credit where credit is due.
Product Ownership Flow Chart for Organic Products
Even crazier is to find out that your favorite “pure” product is owned by a ridiculously huge conglomerate. I am sure the landscape has changed, but I found an excellent flow chart prepared by Professor Howard out of Michigan University (You’ll have to open the PDF below):
I also found a list of organic parent companies who have lobbied against GMO regulations:
COMPANY | DONATION | ORGANIC/NATURAL BRANDS |
Pepsi-Co | $1,716,300 |
|
Coca-Cola | $1,164,400 |
|
ConAgra | $1,076,700 |
|
Kellogg’s | $632,500 |
|
J.M Smucker | $388,000 |
|
Hormel Foods | $374,300 |
|
General Mills | $519,401 |
|
Bimbo Bakeries* | $338,300 |
|
DelMonte | $189,975 |
|
Hershey | $395,100 |
|
Dean Foods | $253,950 |
|
Campbell Soup Co. | $70,455 |
|
McCormick | $248,200 |
|
Please note I didn’t verify the data, but some pretty shocking information about some product ownership.
Wow! That is one interesting post. It’s something that most of us kinda sorta know, but when it’s all laid out this way, it’s crystal clear and really eye-opening.
If you have any moral issue with one of the majors good luck purchasing a similar product. You’re probably going to have to make it yourself, of course for some of the base products you might still be funding them. Unless it’s some very serious morality issues I don’t worry about it, every company is going to have it’s own issues. I remember when the Walmart bribery scandal in Mexico broke and there were all sorts of people shouting foul. It’s not like they were killing people that didn’t want to move for a new store to be opened, they were just bribing government officials which is actually pretty normal in most of the non-“First World” countries.
Now that is interesting. I knew that many of the major “smaller” or niche type of brands were actually owned by larger entities. However, the extent of the reach of those entities, along with the concentration of ownership, is still a bit surprising. A few of those names took me by surprise, in terms of their actual ownership.