An analysis of the Coca Cola Company

Coca Cola is the largest beverage company of the world, and it provides consumers with more than five hundred different brands. Coca Cola is the most valuable company of the world and it includes as products Fanta, Coca Cola Zero, Powerade, and Minute Maid (The Coca-Cola Company, 2010). At the moment the company focuses on the having sustainable community protecting environment and having good economical development.

Company is also called an organization and it is consist of structure, policies, corporate culture which all can become dysfunction in extremely changing business environment (The Coca-Cola Company, 2010). Manager can make changes in structure and policies which are difficult to change but the company’s culture is extremely hard to change. Yet adapting to the culture is often a key to successful implementation of company’s new strategies (Kotler & Keller, 2009).

Coca Cola is a carbonated drink which is used by many worldwide (The Coca-Cola Company, 2010). The Coca Cola is Coke and it was invented in nineteenth century by John Pemberton. The marketing strategy of Coca Cola has made it dominant soft drink of the world. The Coca Cola is the most popular, best selling soft drink in history and best known product of the world. Today you can find Coca Cola in any part of the world.

Mission statement is developed by a company which states to share managers, workers, and customers. A clear and obviously thoughtful mission statement gives the worker with a shared sense of reason, course and prospect(Kotler & Keller, 2009).

Coca Cola’s mission is to declare the purpose of Coca Cola. Coca Cola want to refresh the world and inspire the moment of happiness and cheerfulness. Coca Cola want to create its value and make a difference in the world (Coca-Cola, 2010).

Coca Cola the product

Goods are physical goods make up of large of most countries production and marketing efforts. Each time of the year company’s market number of caned, frozen food products, cars, television, and machines are stronghold of the modern world(Kotler & Keller, 2009).

As economic advance or develop the growing proportion of there activities get focus on production of services, for instant USA economy consist of seventy-thirty services to good mix. Services for instant include working in airlines, hotels, banks, doctors, and software programmers (Coca-Cola, 2010). Many market consist of both offering of service and goods for instant fast food company offer both service and goods(Kotler & Keller, 2009).

The physical characteristic of Coca Cola is to focus on the needs of the customers, and get into the market to listen or observe the customers. Coca Cola wants to process the world view and focus on its place in market every day (Coca-Cola, 2010).

Brand name and trademark

Brand is name, term, sign, or design or a combination of all of these for making or identifying of the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers to distinguish them from those of competition (Shimp, 2003). Trademark is a brand of the company unique designation which distinguishes its offering from other product category entries. Most companies have to apply for trademark registration and some companies have single name for registration whereas other submit multiple names. According to one survey three names are rejected for every registered name(Shimp, 2003).

Coca Cola is the winning culture of today’s world and it is about the attitude of customer it wants to capture. Coca Cola want to become a leader of market by having excellent quality and brand. Brand image of Coca Cola is widely known and it is made up of creativity, excitement, hopefulness and fun.Coca Cola want to be a brand which is known to the world for example if in blind test people prefer Pepsi, however if the test is not blindthen they must prefer Coca Cola over Pepsi.

Coca Cola has well known trademark and it is recognized by many around the world. The Coca Cola has very good business standing and it has very good status. The trademark of Coca Cola is very simple yet bold and known to many.

Product packaging

Packaging of a brand is of course the container that protects and sells the product. Products which are available in the store on the selves are always enclosed, boxed or packed in some way. The term package is used in present context a soft drink bottle is a package or jewel box of a CD (Shimp, 2003).

Coca Cola is the number one brand in the world and its shape was first registered as Coca Cola bottle. Packaging is considering least expensive type of advertising and every package is five second commercial, we can think package as a silent sales man. Package tends to draw attention of the customer, break through the competitor untidiness, and justify the price and value for the customer.The company use varies packaging technique to target the customers one such mechanism is show in the diagram below.

Packaging must insure that the product has best quality and the beverage or the soft drink remains fresh at the time of consumption. Uniformity and reliability in the product are critical to achieve for a company (Coca-Cola, 2010). Coca Cola should have highest standard of quality and safety of the product.

Benefit of goods

Coca Cola is a brand which promises, and it promises to achieve certain result to deliver certain experience in certain way. This is promise is conveyed to people by everything they see, touch, or hear.

Coca Cola as a brand touches millions of people’s heart everyday. At special occasion to formal meeting Coca Cola is part of our life (Coca-Cola, 2010). Coca Cola brand is the special part of people’s lives. Coca Cola as a good has cherished in many lives and given exceptional childhood memories to army action. Thousands of people share their stories of Coca Cola with Coca Cola. The goal of the Coca should be to provide people with active and healthy lives by offering quality beverages.

Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage, an advantage over the competitor which is gained by offering consumer the greater value, by either lower price or by providing more benefit that justify higher price (Kotler & Armstrong, 2008).

Competitive advantage is an ability of a company to perform in one or more ways that the competitors cannot or will not match. A company must have a sustainable competitive advantage because it benefits the company in longer runs. Competitive advantage gives customer advantage for example if Coca Cola deliver its product better than any other competitors then customers will choose Coca Cola over other companies.

Target Market

Target marketing for a brand advertising strategy and related marketing program is define in term of demographics, geo-demographic, psychographic, or product usage characteristic for instant for a flower shop the target market will be all customer who rarely or often purchase flower(Shimp, 2003).

Coca Cola applies the demographic factor to achieve its target market for example it advertise for youths to like the Coca Cola in new generation terms. Coca Cola need to better understand the impact of Coca Cola business and its value for the customer. Coca Cola works in large international chain of retailers and other type of business to create mutual benefits. Customer look forward cost reduction of Coca Cola and improvement of sales to give better quality for diverse group of consumers.

The Coca Cola’s soft drinks are essentially for all consumers but there are some areas where Coca Cola target specific consumers. For instants Coca Cola diet is targeting the consumer whole are older and between the age of twenty five to thirty nine. PowerAde is targeting the people who are very fit and conduct healthy sports. Winnie the Pooh sipper cap is a Juice which is targeting children of small age such as five to twelve. Coca Cola company advertising target primary market of age between thirteen to twenty four, and secondary market is between ten and thirty nine of age.

Consumer consideration of Coca Cola

Coca Cola in many peoples mind is the drink of youth, and it provides refreshment no other drink can provide. Coca Cola is liked by 200 countries of the world and each has diverse cultures.

Buy habits

Due to the large scale of Coca Cola buying habit of people are diverse for instant younger generation want to drink it when they are with friends, and in family orientation in people celebrations Coca Cola is widely use.

Media preferences

Coca Cola is widely advertising TV, radio, and newspapers and mostly it capture the attitude of customers and bring a statement about life style of people. The price of Coca Cola is widely known thus it only needs to advertise life style.

Coca Cola has different price of different product and basically depends upon brand and size. For example Coca Cola classic, Sprite, Fanta, is AED 1 of can and bottle 375ml. Coca Cola product are sold in petrol stations, retail stores and grocery stores. Pricing is set by those the company sells to petrol station and grocery stores usually sell Coca Cola at a fixed price, and in retail stores different stores apply different pricing strategy for instant with pack of six Coca Cola one Pringles free.

Target market segment

Surely the Coca Cola’s target market segment is growing because it is available in every place in the world and liked by many people around the world. The market segment is also very stable because the Coca Cola operates in big countries like China and USA and they have diverse demographic to like Coca Cola as their soft drink.

Industry

Coca Cola operates in soft drink industry or beverage industry. Coca Cola have large share of the industry and it operates around the world. Soft drink Industry is based on new business innovation and it started long time ago. Soft drink industry is very large for instant in USA there are 500 bottler and one hundred eighty three thousand employees with retail sale of sixty one billion of sales. American consumes average of fifty five gallons of soft drink per person per year. In 2001 ninety six point five percent of soft drink industry was of nine leading companies and lead by Coca Cola by forty three percent, and Pepsi thirty one percent. Seven products or brands of Coca Cola account for two/third of its sales.

Competition

Coca Cola’s main competitor is Pepsi which almost sell the similar product and it is in direct competition with us. Indirect competitors are Red Bull, Vitamin C, Energy drinks…etc.

Major competitors

There are many companies that are competitor to Coca Cola and pose some threat to Coca Cola but still Coca Cola is world number one soft drink company. Below is the USA share of the Coca Cola in soft drink industry.

In USA Coca Cola Company had net income increased eight points four percent and it is world largest soft drink maker. Company share is expected to rise from one point five billion to two billion dollar. The beverage volume in USA rose by two percent and world wide it rose by five percent. Coca Cola zero had double digit volume growth and Fanta & Sprite were top performance. Although Coca Cola is number one soft drink company but still its CEO believe that there is no victory in this but they are in process of stabilizing.

Pepsi is second to Coca Cola in sales but sometimes it out sells Coca Cola in some markets. In Mexico Kola real is giving Coca Cola in competition, in France Island Corsica Cola is a major competitor to Cola. In Sweden Julmust out sell the Coca Cola, in Scotland Irn-Bru was more popular than Coca Cola, and in India Thums Up of Pepsi was a head of Coca Cola in sales. British Qibla Cola and France brand of Mecca Cola are popular in Middle East than Coca Cola. RC Cola of Israel is inexpensive competitor to Coca Cola.

Competitor’s advantage over Coca Cola

There are certain risk involve in long term profitability of Coca Cola company for instant people are becoming health conscience and want to decrease the amount of calories, so it will effect Coca Cola in some way. There is also competition in various products of Coca Cola with other companies such as water and sports drinks. Coca Cola is addressing the risk in developed countries by introducing Coca Cola zero products. Today Coca Cola sale in USA and Europe are sustain but in twenty years the Coca Cola growth will be in emerging markets.

It is important fact that Coca Cola products have been stable through the economic cycle for instant the price of Coca Cola didn’t change when recession hit the economy.

Coca Cola’s advantage over competitors

Coca Cola is the number one selling drink and it has been doing it for many decades. Coca Cola spend lot of money in research and development so it has survived on large economic scale. Coca Cola has brand equity which means it is the favorable brand. Coca Cola has competitive advantage on other company to enter its market barrier to entry, for instant there are many companies which product similar product as Coca Cola. Coca Cola didn’t file its patent whereas IBM did but both companies are successful. Coca Cola has competitive advantage so it is making it get bigger and bigger in terms of sales and market share. Coca Cola reputation has also competitive advantage and it is also pursuing environmental friendly product. Coca Cola many products are recyclable and Coca Cola is also going for the green effect.

SWOT

Coca Cola’s internal strengths

Strength of the Coca Cola is that it is widely recognized company and its popularity is strength itself. Coca Cola brand is easily recognized for instant its logos, color, promotions, t-shirts… etc. no other soft drink company compare to Coca Cola’s popularity status and for this reason people buy Coke not because of taste but they feel it is accepted and they feel they are part of something big or unifying. People are extremely loyal to Coca Cola and 80 percent of Coca Cola revenues come from 20 percent of their loyal customers. Coca Cola has ability to sell the product all over the world and they will continue to buy what they like (Coca Cola).

Coca Cola’s internal weakness

Coca Cola has limited number of weakness and they need to correct the weakness if they want to achieve the excellent or next level of achievements. Strength and weakness are part of any company because people like to say different things about the company and it creates an image of the company.Coca Cola has produce excellent or popular product such as Coke and Sprite but it has approximately four hundred types of drinks which are unknown to many people. There is also some issues about health aspect of products of Coca Cola.

Coca Cola’s external opportunities

Coca Cola has few opportunities in its business but it has many successful brands which it should continue to exploit. Coca Cola has opportunity to advertise less popular products because it has large income.Coca Cola is known to 90 percent population of the world and it has opportunity to make it closer to 100 percent. Coca Cola has opportunity to increase the gap between them and their competitors.

Coca Cola’s external Threats

Despite the success of Coca Cola and its dominance in market it has yet to deal with threats. Coca Cola has to deal with the threat of attitude towards the drink as changing health consciousness of people. Drinking habits can damage the sales of Coca Cola and decrease its popularity. Coca Cola also need to be carefulabout the law suit it faces.

Marketing promotion strategy

Coca Cola has most popular marketing promotion strategy because its brand is widely known. To make a successful marketing promotion strategy a company must analysis trends (internal and external), spending throughout company, identify customer and touch point for company and the brand and to have innovation in its promotions marketing. Coca Cola has been advertising on TV over fifty years. Coca Cola songs and commercials are extremely popular and they have catchy mottos such as “Adds a refreshing relish to every form of exercise” (Coca-Cola, 2010).

Advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, publicity

Advertising involves either mass communication by News paper; Magazine, Medias or direct communication is between business to business customer and only the customer. Both form of advertising are paid to different advertisers. Direct advertisement consists of traditional mail, email has made growth in recent years to target communication and computer has this possible (Shimp, 2003). Coca Cola is using advertising as main source of consumer awareness. It usually uses television to advertise Coca Cola product, but it also uses the platform of games such as Fifa World Cup.

Personal selling involves person to person communication by the sale person to inform, educate and pursue the consumer to buy the companies product or service (Shimp, 2003). There is large and highly trained sales team of Coca Cola to represent the company to the retailers, this strategy maintains service and product loyalty and this also demonstrate effective business.

Sales promotion is collection of all marketing activities that try to stimulate quick buyer action or quick sale of the product and service. Sale promotions are directed at trade, consumer or both (Shimp, 2003). Sales promotions are common for Coca Cola in retail market which also help Coca Cola to grow.

Publicity is like advertising and involves non personal communication to mass people, but unlike advertising, the companies don’t pay for media time or space. Publicity is usually assuming form of news item or article comment about companies’ product and services (Shimp, 2003). Publicity is common in Coca Cola such as in 2003 Vanilla Coke was released in media as new briefing out lining the huge profit.

Coca Cola is most profitable company in the world, and it is also number one soft drink company, and investing in it is profitable. Coca Cola does the marketing in a way that people adore the products of Coca Cola, and it sure has very long and prosperous history. Coca Cola profitability and recognitions come from the way it market its brands. Coca Cola is most well-known brand in the world and marketing played a big role in that.