from the top of the range down, and to keep the family in the coffin showroom for forty minutes. We are pushed to sell the more expensive coffins.” And here come the carrots and sticks: at the beginning of each year, each funeral parlor is assigned a target figure and a target budget. This is further refined as a breakdown of the number of funerals each is expected to perform each month and how much should be earned per funeral. “Some funeral directors have to sell a Consort or above to reach the budget figure,” Mr. B explained. Those who fail to achieve the budget figure get a letter or phone call expressing disappointment; Somebody Up There is watching, namely SCI’s control department. Mr. B had such a phone call last January, saying that he was down 12 pounds from the sales of the previous January. Conversely, two thousand overachievers are singled out each year for a “loyalty or productivity” bonus.
The SCI bigwigs were inclined to shrug off adverse comments from any quarter. Eric Spencer, an Englishman whose SCI title is senior director of corporate development, was chief executive of the Great Southern Group before the takeover. His primary responsibility, he said, is in Europe, although he does also look after some of the British acquisitions.
“This anti-American hysteria is quite laughable,” he said. “Although SCI is owned by Americans, there are only two American executives permanently in the U.K. Everyone below them is English.” He explained that SCI intended to maintain a low profile; it refused to get into a shouting match with its detractors in the media, which is why they declined the invitation to appear in the “Public Eye” documentary. He now thinks that decision might have been a mistake, and said that “we’ll see a more active response from SCI in the future.”
Peter Hindley, the English chief executive of SCI in the U.K., is the author of many an in-house directive to “All Staff.” Accusations of hard sell? “Absolute rubbish,” he said. “We do not have hard-sell tactics. What we have is people offering client choices, informed choice. We offer a much wider range of coffins than other funeral directors. We will offer a much greater range of ashes caskets [cremation urns]. We will offer memorial books, and a much wider range of graveside memorials. We will offer a better range of flowers.” Echoing his memo to “All Staff” in the wake of the “Public Eye” documentary (in his opinion, the program was “motivated by some of our competitors”), he declared that “small-minded funeral businesses spend their life trying to sling mud at SCI.”
Of far greater moment than the slings and arrows of the media to SCI’s plans for achieving its goal of “enhancing its revenues by enhancing consumer choices” is the May 1995 report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission presented to Parliament by the secretary of trade and industry by command of Her Majesty. The MMC is the British counterpart of the Federal Trade Commission, but the approach of the two agencies to their mandated job of consumer protection couldn’t be more different.
The FTC does not normally concern itself with so-called market share until it becomes formidable enough to threaten competition in wide regional areas. SCI’s national market share in the U.S., measured in terms of its own undertaking establishments, is about 10 percent. Not to worry, says the FTC. But what of Houston, Texas, where SCI’s market share, measured by its share of the funeral business, is no less than 70 percent?
The MMC, recognizing that competition in the funeral trade is of local rather than national concern, has taken a different view of SCI’s recent acquisitions in the U.K. It has condemned the merger on the ground that “it may be expected to operate against the public interest.” Its reasons stated with typically British reserve, the report castigates the merger in terms which would equally apply to SCI’s operations in the U.S. and Australia:
Our investigation indicates that although funeral directors do compete on price the competition is muted. The market is a long way from functioning effectively. Entry is likely to be particularly difficult where a powerful, well-run supplier has a large share of the market…. We also have concerns about the degree of transparency of funeral directors’ charges, the lack of transparency of ownership of funeral directing outlets and the ability of funeral directors unduly to influence the choice of funeral arrangements.
The report identifies ten localities where the merged companies’ share of funerals performed range from 29 percent to 51 percent. Consequently, the report continues, “SCI may be expected… to raise prices excessively… to the detriment of consumers in these localities.” While the Federal Trade Commission has turned a blind eye to SCI’s practice of concealing from the public its ownership and control of its hundreds of funeral homes by the fictitious use of their pre-purchase names, this practice is a matter of concern to the MMC:
SCI’s failure to disclose to consumers the ownership of its branches will add significantly to the inability of consumers… to make informed decisions.
The report recommends that SCI be ordered to sell off enough of its funeral business in the ten Greater London markets to reduce its market share to not more than 25 percent, and that it be ordered to make no further acquisitions in those areas without prior approval.
The report notes that “it would be natural for SCI to take advantage” of its acquisitions of crematoria by steering its business to them: “As prices at SCI’s crematoria are generally higher than those of competitors, this would be a clear loss to consumers.” Therefore, “SCI should be required to post prices of competing crematoria at every SCI funeral directing branch….”
Finally, there should be an end to SCI’s devious ploy of concealing its identity from the purchaser. It should be required “to disclose its ownership of funeral directing businesses prominently in all documentation presented to customers and in all advertisements or other promotional material used in connection with those businesses. We believe it is highly desirable that the disclosure of ultimate ownership of funeral directing branches should be the general practice throughout the UK.”[25]
Reverberating throughout SCI’s promotional literature, in memoranda from American executives to British staff and in written declarations for public consumption, are the words “dignity,” “respect,” “tradition.” These are repeated as a sort of mantra, meant to reassure everyone of the company’s sincere intention of preserving Britain’s ingrained funerary customs.
But then—oh dear!—SCI really put its foot in it by producing an illustrated brochure bearing the imprimatur of the staid and ancient British firm of the Kenyon Funerals now owned by SCI. The message: “Disasters cause the greatest public relations challenge any carrier can meet.” The
The families of victims were furious; Pamela Dix, whose brother died in the Lockerbie disaster, told the
Kenyon, founded in 1816, had an exalted past, having buried such dignitaries as Lord Mountbatten and Sir Winston Churchill; it had been undertaker for the Royal Family, but no longer. The Queen withdrew the royal contract when Kenyon was bought out, “preferring to deal with named individuals rather than large conglomerates,” according to Keith Leverton, whose firm, Levertons, is presently under contract to the Palace. True to form, SCI has been trying—so far without success—to obtain funeral records of British monarchs whose funerals were handled by Kenyon. They would doubtless use this information in future publicity, much as they have done with claims to Elvis Presley and U.S. presidents, all of whom died long before SCI acquired the premises that arranged their funerals.
English Country Funerals
In the English countryside, the style and conduct of funerals are, it seems, pretty much unchanged from time
