IB Business Management HLTopic 8 — Pre-Released Statement 2025Paper 1Core idea~12 min read
Spotting the Key Themes
Myt PLC’s story is short, but it is doing a lot of work. Five ideas run through it, and they are all connected by one uncomfortable fact: the drinks that made Myt successful are the ones people are increasingly told to avoid. Everything else in the case is a response to that.
📚 What you need to know
Growth and expansion — internal from one root beer to 30+ drinks, external through two 2023 acquisitions.
Marketing and promotion — influencers now, computer-generated avatars possibly next.
Health and ethics — sugar, caffeine, and criticism of the sweeteners used to replace them.
CSR and sustainability — greener factories, packaging, and the risk of promising more than you deliver.
Changing consumer tastes — the shift towards water, coffee, functional drinks and healthier snacks.
Every theme is a reaction to the same problem: the core product is losing social approval.
The themes in one picture
Draw this from memory before the exam. Every 10-mark question in the 2025 paper sits on one of these spokes.
Theme 1: growth and expansion
Myt has used both routes to growth in the same story, which is unusual and very examinable. Internal growth took it from one product to a portfolio of more than thirty. External growth added a coffee chain and a bottled water manufacturer in a single year.
The two acquisitions are not the same kind of move, either. Honest Water is still a drinks manufacturer, so it fits Myt’s existing operations. Lotssa Coffee is retail — thousands of shops, staff serving customers, rent, locations. Running shops is a genuinely different business from filling bottles.
Point worth making. Buying two companies in one year is a lot of integration at once. Different cultures, different systems and different customers all landing together stretch management thin. Saying that is an evaluation mark most candidates miss.
Theme 2: marketing and promotion
Myt reaches customers through social media influencers, which is cheap, fast and works well with younger buyers. It is now considering computer-generated avatars — digital characters that appear in adverts.
The logic is understandable. An avatar never gets into a scandal, never asks for a pay rise, and can be used in every market at once. The risks are just as clear: it can feel fake, it costs real money to build, and audiences that value authenticity may not respond to it.
There is a nice irony here. Myt wants to look more trustworthy on health and sustainability, and its answer is a computer-generated spokesperson. Point that out and you will sound like you are thinking, not reciting.
Theme 3: health and ethics
This is the pressure that drives the whole case. High sugar and caffeine are linked to obesity and diabetes, governments are taxing sugary drinks, and consumers are drifting towards healthier options.
Myt’s fix is reformulation: less sugar, less caffeine. But sweeteners bring their own criticism, and reducing sugar changes the taste, which risks losing the loyal customers who like the drink as it is.
ARGUMENTS FOR REFORMULATING
Avoids sugar taxes and future regulation.
Meets what many consumers now say they want.
Protects the brand from health criticism.
Opens the door to the healthy snacks market.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST
Changing the taste can lose loyal buyers.
Sweeteners attract their own criticism.
Reformulation research costs money.
Rivals may reformulate faster and better.
Theme 4: CSR and sustainability
Myt plans greener factories, better packaging and improved CSR generally. Note the word “plans”. Nothing here has happened yet, and that gap is exactly what pressure groups target.
Bottled water makes this harder, not easier. Buying Honest Water gave Myt a growing market, but bottled water is heavily criticised for plastic waste and for the amount of water taken from local sources. The acquisition that improved Myt’s health image may have damaged its environmental one.
Theme 5: changing consumer tastes
Consumers are moving away from traditional fizzy drinks towards water, coffee, low-sugar options and functional drinks with added health benefits. Myt’s acquisitions were a direct answer to that shift, and the healthy snacks idea is the next step.
The catch is that everyone has noticed. Big rivals and small health-focused start-ups are all chasing the same customers, so being in the right market is not the same as winning it.
Worked examples
WORKED EXAMPLE
Explain one possible challenge Myt PLC could face when reducing sugar and caffeine in its drinks. [2]
Step 1: the business point
Changing the recipe changes the taste, and loyal customers who buy a product for its flavour may switch to a rival rather than accept the new version. [1]Step 2: apply it
Myt’s original root beer is one of its longest-standing products, so reformulating it risks damaging the very brand that built the company. [1]2 / 2Naming the root beer is the application. “Some customers might not like it” on its own is only worth one mark.
WORKED EXAMPLE
Analyse three ways Myt PLC’s CSR initiatives could affect its brand image and profitability. [6]
Way 1 — image improves, sales follow
Greener factories and lower-sugar drinks respond to what consumers say they want, which can attract health-conscious and environmentally minded buyers and support premium pricing.
Way 2 — costs rise before savings arrive
Modernising factories on six continents is expensive. Profits fall in the short term, and shareholders in a publicly held company may resist that.
Way 3 — the credibility riskIf the changes are announced but not delivered, pressure groups will call it greenwashing. Owning a bottled water business makes Myt an easy target on plastic waste, so partial improvement could damage the brand more than doing nothing.
Three developed effects, one positive, two cautionaryNotice the phrase “publicly held company”. Ownership constrains strategy, and saying so is analysis.
💡 Exam tip
Start every answer by naming the theme. It orients the examiner immediately.
Split the acquisitions. Honest Water is related; Lotssa Coffee is retail. They are not the same move.
Use “planned” carefully. Green factories are an intention, and that is a legitimate criticism.
Link the themes. Health pressure explains the acquisitions, which explain the CSR problem.
Remember the shareholders. Myt is a PLC, so every cost has to be defended to owners.
Do not treat five paragraphs as a plan. Two or three developed themes beat five shallow ones.
⚠ Common mix-up
Diet drinks are not automatically healthy. Sweeteners have attracted their own criticism.
CSR is not marketing. If it is only a campaign, it is exactly what pressure groups attack.
Influencers and avatars are different strategies with different risks and different costs.
Bottled water is not obviously the green choice. Plastic and water extraction are both real issues.
Buying a company is not entering a market successfully. Integration is where acquisitions fail.
Changing tastes are an opportunity and a threat. Argue both if the question allows it.
Up next: Choosing the Right Toolkit Tool — which model to reach for, and the BCG matrix applied to Myt’s portfolio.
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