Marketing Analysis Of The Coca Cola Company

Mission Statement

The world around us is dynamic and a change takes place very frequently. To continue to prosper as an organization, an organization must look beyond its objectives to survive in the long run. The Coca Cola Company is an American multinational beverage entity headquartered in Atlanta but incorporated in Wilmington. It was invented in the year 1886 by John Stith, who amalgamated The Coca Cola Company in 1892. “We must get ready for tomorrow” The vision it has taken up to achieve by the year 2020.

Our roadmap starts with our mission, which is persistent. It declares as a backbone, and thrives to achieve its standards as a whole.

• Refreshing the world
• Prompt for optimistic approach and happiness
• Value creation and creating a difference

In order to achieve Sustainable Growth and Development, one must accomplish the Roadmap that needs to be adopted. Following fulfillments must be made in order to accomplish company’s vision statement:

• Workforce: The organization you work for should be a great place to work for. Accomplishments should be company goals and objectives with individual objectives (Hollensen 2015).
• Portfolio: It aims to fulfill people desires and needs by serving quality beverage brands
• Partners: Winning with customers and quoting the best price in the market by negotiating with its suppliers is a must.
• Planet: It is our responsibility to be a responsible citizen by helping build supportable communities
• Profit: The ultimate goal of the company is to maximize the profits of the company and increase interest of the shareholders
• Productivity: A highly performing organization leads to be more productive and achieves high standards

 To turn our vision into reality it is very important that a company has positive attitude and behavior towards society

Focus on the Market

• Emphasizing on the needs and priorities of the customers, consumers and vendors
• Get feedback from the customers and taking action to improve upon
• Focus on Execution skills
• Having a world-wide recognition

Ultimately the goal lies in creating creativity, desire, zestfulness and fun in the minds of the people

Coca-Cola is a brand which serves households, wholesalers, shop-keepers, offices etc. Here is the SWOT analysis of Coca- Cola. A SWOT analysis helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company:

Some of the company strengths are listed below:

• Brand Equity: The brand Coca-cola has world-wide presence and has a unique identity than other beverages served. It got the award of highest brand equity.
• Company Valuation: This brand has the world’s largest market share amongst all the beverages. It is valued around 79.2 billion dollar. This value holds the Brand image, its operating cost, its assets spread in different countries along with the profit margin (Karnani 2014).
• Vast Global Presence:Coca cola has its share in 200 different countries. There are hardly any countries where its presence will not be found.
• Largest Market share: The two big competitors in the beverage industry are Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Amongst all the other beverages i.e. coke,limca,fanta,sprite and Pepsi Coca-Cola holds the maximum share
• Customer Loyalty: In a monopolistic market, with such strong presence it is real that it will gather customer loyalty easily. Customers will prefer this over other brands as it tastes good and a wide range of variety is also available.
• Distribution Network:Coca-Cola has distribution channels spread in all the states, because of its huge demand in the market.

Weaknesses of the brand are stated below:

• Competition with Pepsi: Pepsi is a spur in the cells for Coca Cola. It would have created a Monopoly in the market if presence of Pepsi was unknown. The competition amongst the two brands is so huge that none of the brands will give up so easily
• Diversification:Pepsi has made a smart move with wide range of other products also available i.e. Lays, Kurkure etc but Coca cola has limited itself to beverages. The segments created for the same brand gives additional Revenue, whereas Coca-Cola lags in this
• Absence in Health beverages: Aerated drinks are the major cause of obesity these days, which consumers are nowadays avoiding due to health issues faced by them. And Coca-cola being the largest seller of carbonated drinks has dropped its sale in the recent times.
• Water Management:Coca- Cola has faced disapproval issues in the past because of its water management issues. Many lawsuits have been filed against the company for mixing pesticides in its contents which has made it a failure product (Greenfield 2016).

Opportunities of the Brand Coca-cola:

• Introduce Energy Drinks: If the brand diversifies itself to other segments i.e. serving health drinks and other offerings then it can be a market player. This will also help in enhancing revenue across other segments from existing buyers and also new customer base added (Weinstein and Pohlman 2015).
• Increase the distribution Network:Although it has a wide distribution network and is spread in many countries, but it is lagging behind as the customers are moving towards healthy drinks. Countries like India have increased sale of aerated drinks during summers, but if it adds flavor and healthy contents to it will make it more popular.
• Wrapped drinking water:With hygiene becoming a major factor, packaged drinking water has taken its place in the market. Although it has Kinley as packaged drinking water but can improve its quality and overtake Bisleri Brand. It must focus to popularize its unfamiliar products.

Threats faced by the company:

• Decreasing Gross Profit/Net Profit Margin: Coca Cola needs to concentrate on the products which have not found any compliance in the market. These segments are sharply dropping the profit margin of the company due to high expenses incurred on its packaging.
• Raw Material supplied: Coca-cola can experience a major downfall in the near future due to scarcity of water content in various regions. Also the content of pesticides mixed in the beverages are dropping sales of the company
• Indirect Competitors: In the competitive world there is wide range of beverages available as substitutes which can drop the sales of Coca-cola. They are not in big competition with coca-cola but adopting the culture of healthy drinks has started to replace this product. They are indirectly stealing the market share, so in order to be successful coca-cola must start manufacturing healthy drinks.

Market research basically means collecting and gathering market information systematically to widen the market information about the products (Baker 2014). Coca Cola has applied both Quantitative and Qualitative methods to collect information. Qualitative research includes numbers. Coca-cola did a research on happiness from drinking Coca-cola by adopting Qualitative technique. The effectiveness of market research is shown when their profit margins increase.

The basic aim for the research is to know how happy their customers are with the beverage provided and what improvement can be done to make it a successful product.

Coca-Cola research has five stages to gather information which are explained as follows:

• Identify Opportunity: This basically aims at identifying existing product, and comparing with new product to see whether the product fits into the market as per the current market scenario. Also it keeps its focus on Target consumers (Möller and Parvinen 2015).
• Explore Solution: In order to survive in the market it is important to explore new products or expand existing products with wide range. The customers at times are attracted to the packaging and design of the product so it should be changed with time (Mahmood et al. 2015).
• Outline Effectiveness: If the substitutes for existing product are available in the market, consumer surveys should be conducted to meet their existing demands
• Test Market: Before a product is launched in the market test surveys are conducted amongst the consumers to know their real taste for drinks and also whether the new product would give them revenues or not. A sample of customers is taken to evaluate the performance of new product to be launched in the market.
• Track Market Performance: Sales information gather through wholesalers/retailers determine market performance. Once the product is fully launched in the market, capturing revenues, no of customers is a must

To overcome its competitors, Coca-Cola uses a combination of Internal and External Marketing strategies to become a purposeful company. With a good name in the market Coca-cola changed its original name Coke with New Coke in the year 1985, to give their customer base a new flavor. Market segments help the company to improve its products, as per the needs and demand of the customer (Dickinson 2014). The Coca-Cola Company strives to focus on the market requirements.

The brand is more popular amongst the youth, so it emphasis on young generation more. The Coca-Cola Company has its franchise all over the world serving non-alcoholic drinks.

The marketing strategy is so designed, and uses multi-segment Targeting strategy which means that the company has adopted more than one strategy.

Coca-Cola has wide range of drinks available for different segments basis age group, lifestyle etc. For example Oasis Juice is available for the young group, in the age group of 20-30. This product is more popular in Britain and Ireland and is available in different flavors.

Vision Statement

It covers both the genders with range of drinks in the age group of 15-25 and above. The segment of customers is divided as per their income groups i.e. low income group is served with returnable glass bottles and High income groups are served cold-drinks in cans

There are people who prefer to drink branded drinks in order to show their status in the society (Banterle et al. 2014). Coca-Cola designs the product keeping in mind the needs of the customers. It gains the trust of its customers by contributing to the environment. It has diversified its products all over the world to inculcate every type of consumer.

Coca Cola is a label which has the highest brand equity in the beverage Industry. No matter after facing so many hardships this brand has created a market image for itself. The Marketing Mix of Coca-Cola keeps changing with time as it keeps on adding products to compete with the competitors (Iwamuro et al. 2014).

The company has a huge portfolio in the beverage industry. As per Nelson’s data Coca-Cola is number one brand in beverages served across. Coca Cola brands served in India are Fanta, Maaza, Limca, Minute Maid etc.

The four elements are adjusted in such a way that it forms a right combination

Below are the 4 P’s of marketing:

• Price:The prices are set for the products as per the Geographical area and income group of the customers (Gustavo 2013). Each sub brand of Coca-cola adopts different strategies of price. The beverage industry is an Oligopoly market (where demand is more and supply is less). A mutual balance is created amongst the customers and price strategies to be set
• Place: Coca Cola is a world-wide brand with its distribution network spread across many countries. Their franchisees are there all over the world. It is important to choose a place where product is to be sold.
• Promotion:Coca Cola acquires various marketing strategies and advertises to create a demand for the product in the market. It has many brand ambassadors like shah-rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Aamir Khan who have signed their contract to make it widely famous. It is the most important tool to drive its sale in India. “Support my School campaign” is its latest advertising campaign.
• Product:It has the widest portfolio in the beverage industry. Coca-Cola was launched in the year 1993 in India; it added range of products in the year 1998 like Thumbs up, Fanta, Maaza etc. Product focuses on Quality, branding, packaging and other characteristics as per customer feedback (Boyjoo et al. 2017).
• Packaging:The brand Coca-Cola focuses on its packaging and serves in small bottles as per the needs of the customer i.e. 200 ml bottle, 300ml etc

For any Company to reach at its peak, it is important to adopt a correct promotional mix. It makes the effective and efficient use of the strategies used.

Conclusion:

The company has come a long way from serving aerated drinks to juices, water, more flavors of aerated drinks and energy drinks. It has expanded its business world-wide. Coca-Cola’s dedication to remain the most loved brand over the years is its dedication and commitment towards people. Without any doubt, Coca-Cola Company has served multi-million customers across the globe, serving them with various substitutes. It believes that the organization has built in trust, to win its customers. This as a result has helped the company in achieving high profit margin.

References:

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