Coca Cola Company Management Marketing

Marketing management is very core subject for every business in today’s competitive world because it leads the company towards the righteous path of success and it also offers several options of growth and expansion while utilising the same level of resources and capital. In this assignment we have selected the Coca Cola Company and its product to be discussed in order to answer the questions. In this paper, being a marketing manager of the Coca Cola Company I have to evaluate the company’s product portfolio, and I also have to complete a marketing audit to ascertain what products/services/brands are most successful and which ones are in decline.

Company Selected: Coca Cola

The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) is a most important manufacturer, distributor and dealer of non-alcoholic drink concentrates and syrups. The corporation owns or certify more than 450 brands, counting diet and light beverages, waters, fruit drink and juice drinks, teas, coffees, and power and sports drinks. The corporation functions in more than 200 countries. The corporation is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and working 90,500 people as of monetary year (FY) 2007. The corporation recorded revenues of $28,857 million during FY2007, a boost of 19.8% over FY2006. The functioning profit of the corporation was $7,252 million during FY2007, an amplification of 15% over FY2006. The net income was $5,981 million in FY2007, an increase of 17.7% over FY2006 (Ham brick, 2004, P: 171-213).

Coca-Cola is one of the main bottlers of non intoxicating beverages in Europe. The business is busy in the manufacturing, sales and sharing of the goods of The Coca-Cola Company. CCHBC proffers a broad variety of sparkling soft drinks and non gaseous soft drinks. Non carbonated soft drinks comprise juices, waters, sports and power drinks, and other ready-to-drink beverages such as tea and coffee. The business operates in 28 countries and alienated these countries into three groups that is, Established Countries, Developing Countries and Emerging Countries.

Coca-Cola has exposed tactics to produce profits in developed markets, counting the UK, through low-volume place products such as power drinks and its fruit-flavoured water Aquarius. Contestants had articulated bewilderment over the company’s manifold launches in the UK, reproachful it of a ‘scatter-gun’ move towards and failing to give product launches, such as that of its persistent power drink, with considerable marketing hold up.

Product Portfolio of the Coca Cola Company

As we all know that it is an undeniable fact that the Coca Cola Company is one of the market leaders in the soft drink sector so in order to remain at the top of the industry it is basic necessarily to enter in all the ranges of the soft drinks and to serve the customers at their best. While considering the modern needs of the business Coca Cola Company has been entered in all most all types of products ranging from sweet soft drinks, sweet juices and energy drinks (Hanlon, et al. 2006, P: 87- 111).

Products

As a bottling corporation, Coca-Cola’s product line is strong-minded by the offerings of its think manufacturers. At present, CCE’s portfolio is calm first and foremost of the Coca-Cola Company’s products, though it does manufacture and bottle beverages for other companies. Although CCE’s products vary rather by region, many of its brands are alike across markets.

Carbonated Soft Drinks

* Coca-Cola

* Diet Coke

* Sprite

* Coca-Cola Zero

* Fanta

Mountain Dew

Non-carbonated Soft Drinks

* Capri Sun

* Arizona Teas

* Nestea

* POWERade

* Minute Maid Juices to Go

Water

Kinley

Energy Drink

Full Throttle

Coca Cola Marketing Audit

Coca-Cola is one of the mainly familiar brands around the sphere. Having recognized a most important product that fascinates customers all over the globe, Coca-Cola is extensively looked upon as one of the most deafening associations having attained huge product achievement (Hare, & O’Neill, 2000, P: 24-53).

Achieving Brand Reinvention

A key constituent of Coca-Cola’s achievement can be surely credited to its product diagrams. Since 1866 that it started its operations until nowadays that is an influential, internationally known commerce, the company’s brand growth strategies repeatedly lift client notice and stay very spirited. Having achieved imposing brand loyalty through incessant reinvention of its brand and focus on brand improvement, Coca-Cola is, devoid of any doubt, the leading non-alcoholic drink corporation in the globe.

Focusing on Consumer Sophistication

Its product strategies centre on the altering marketplace realism and consumer complexity that requires dissimilar move towards and brand redesigning. In the near the beginning years, the corporation focused on creation the brand reasonably priced, obtainable and satisfactory in the aim of set up a brand that would be right away familiar and extremely refreshing in consumers’ intelligence. Over the years, and in an attempt to regulate its branding plan to the new customer demands, Coca-Cola purposeful on building brand individuality by offering value for price, separation to get together customer preferences (preference), and all-encompassing saturation. Nowadays, by testing at least 20 dissimilar brands on a periodical basis on a sample of 4,000 customers, Coca-Cola is a business with strong brand individuality and product image (Spreitzer, et al. 2004, P: 679-704).

Evaluating Consumer Response

Besides, the corporation continually measures consumer reply to its brands in command to assess customer insight and find out what customers consider about its products. Customers narrate exacting brands with exacting symbols and assure that need to be met. Likewise, Coca-Cola is connected to an exacting level of client contentment that is strong-minded by the communal reminiscence of its objective spectators.

Achieving Strategic Consensus

An additional significant feature of Coca-Cola’s branding plans is the statement that physically powerful brands create huge sales and augment their revenues. On the other hand, Coca-Cola has taken the additional mile by construction a product that has directed to add to sustainable sales by drawing and keeping the best human capital and spending in worker relations and client relation management. This has allowed the business not merely to attain planned agreement and position at all managerial levels, but also to activate optimistic feelings in consumers’ intelligence.

Building Brand Loyalty

At last, physically powerful brand picture is connected to brand loyalty. The more customer demands are content, the more consumers are emotionally involved to a product and booked by non-payment. Also, Coca-Cola’s product image entails the purchase incidence that is boosted by effectual advertising movements and advertising strategies. In doing so, the business expands its client base and improves client faithfulness by meeting customer needs and lifting customer contentment (Stanne, et al. 2002, P: 133-154).

Coca Cola Declining Product

If we look towards the over all performance of the Coca Cola energy drink then we will realise that it is not very much lucrative so far as other products are. Coca Cola is leading the way of the soft drink business. There is not a put in the world that has for no reason heard of this drink. After over a century of dominating the soft drink business, Coca Cola now has determined its concentration on piercing the energy drink market.

Energy drinks have turned out to be extremely well-liked over the last few years. It is approximately not possible to go a whole day devoid of seeing someone consumer some kind of energy drink. People have turned out to be just as dependent relative on them as an every day cup of coffee. For many years, Coca-cola has recognized itself as one of the mainly able to be seen American soft drink manufacturers in the globe. Coca-cola is not a corporation that does not boundary itself to just one commerce section; it is always looking for the subsequently big course of action. The power drink is still in the growth stage of the product life cycle. Based on the achievement of energy drinks there are no indication that this market will grow any time soon. Even though there are many power drinks out there, yet there are only a small number of that stand out such as; Red Bull, Monster, and Sobe. According to Ezine articles, Coca-Cola has secured almost 8 percent of the energy drink market with its Full Throttle product. Dissimilar many of its competitor, Coca Cola’s energy drinks is international and not just obtainable in some areas. Product placement has always been one of the much strength of Coca Cola. To safe its place in the power drink market Coca Cola is keen to obtain many of the lesser companies. This is obvious by Coca Cola’s recent buy of Vitamin water. Coca-Cola goes the additional mile to make sure that it has a spirited edge on its rivals (Steiner, 2002).

Almost each market that Coca Cola has penetrated it has been winning. There is no cause to believe that it will not attain the similar results with its new entry into the power drink market. Its perseverance has always been a causal factor in the past. The power drink is still in the development stage in terms of marketing; Coca Cola’s attendance in this market will make sure it long-term productivity.

Task 2

Marketing Plan of the Coca Cola Energy Drink

Market Analysis

The market analysis examines both the internal and external commerce surroundings. It is very important that Coca cola cautiously check both the internal and external aspects concerning it s commerce as both the internal and external surroundings and their own influences will be important traits in relation to Coke’s success and continued existence in the soft drink manufacturing.

Internal Business Environment

The internal commerce surroundings and its pressure is that which is to a number of extents within the commerce manage. The main characteristic in the internal surroundings include competence in the manufacture procedure, through organization skills and effectual communication channels. To efficiently organize and monitor the internal business surroundings, Coke must demeanour repeated appraisals of the commerce s operations and willingly acts upon any issue, which cause inefficiencies in any stage of the manufacture and customer procedure.

External Business Environment

The External commerce surroundings and its power are more often than not influential forces that can have an effect on a whole manufacturing and, in piece of information, a whole financial system. Changes in the external surroundings will make opportunities or threats in the marketplace place Coca cola must be conscious off. Fluctuations in the financial system, changing purchaser attitudes and values, and demographic patterns a lot power the achievement of Coca Cola products on the marketplace and the welcome they be given from the customers (Steiner, 2002).

Product Life cycle

When referring to each and every product or service ever located before the consumer i.e. in the long term all the existing products and services are dead. For e.g.:- substitute of Ford Cortina (a highly successful car) by Ford Sierra, the substitute of sierra by the Ford Mondeo and the substitute of the old Mondeo by the new Mondeo in 2001. So every product is natural, grows, matures and dies. So in the for profit market place products and services are shaped, launched and withdrawn in a procedure known as Product Life Cycle.

To be capable to market its manufactured goods correctly, commerce must be aware of the product life cycle of its product. The criterion product life cycle tends to have five phases: Development, Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. Coca-Cola is at present in the maturity stage, which is proof first and foremost by the fact that they have a big, loyal group of steady customers. In addition, cost management, product separation and marketing have turned out to be more significant as enlargement slows and market share becomes the key determinant of productivity. In foreign markets the product life cycle is in more of a growth trend Coke’s benefit in this area is mainly due to its establishment strong branding and it is now able to use this area of stable profitability to subsidize the domestic Cola Wars

Selecting Target Market

Once the state of affairs analysis is complete, and the marketing objectives strong-minded, concentration turns to the target market. The soft drink market is very large, and the commerce cannot be all things to all people, so it must decide which market segments have the maximum possible. The target market is the group of customers on whom the business focuses attention. The target market is where Coca Cola focuses its marketing efforts as it feels this is where it will be most productive and successful. The target market for Coca cola is very wide as it satisfies the needs for many different consumers, ranging from the healthy diet consciousness through Diet Coke to the average human through its best selling drink regular Coke. Most Coke products satisfy all age groups as it is proven that most people of different age groups consume the Coca Cola product. This market is relatively large and is open to both genders, thereby allowing greater product diversification.

There are four broad ways which Coca Cola can segment its Energy drink market:

-> Mass marketing

-> Concentrated marketing

-> Differentiated marketing

-> Niche marketing

The most obvious method used by Coca Cola is with no hesitation the distinguished marketing method as Coke satisfies s a variety of different markets. Diet coke satisfies s the weight awareness, regular coke, sprite, fanta the average human, coffee, iced tea etc. Each group of beverages satisfy a exacting group of people but majority the average human.

Monitoring and Controlling

Monitoring and controlling lets the commerce to make sure for variance in the budget and actual. This is significant because it allows Coca Cola to take the essential actions to meet the advertising objectives. There are three tools Coca Cola should use to monitor the marketing plan. They are the following:

i. Sales Analysis

The sales analysis breaks down sum business sales by marketplace segments to recognize strengths and weaknesses in the dissimilar areas of sales. Sellers of Coca Cola products vary from major retail supermarkets to small corner stores. This gives the products maximum exposure to customers at their convenience (Steiner, 2002).

ii. Market Share Analysis

Market share analysis compares Coca Cola s business sales presentation with that of its competitors. Coca Cola looks to add to its market share by over 60%. With the changes Coca Cola is at present undergoing, they aim to get back to an iron fist control of the market. Target market a variety of age groups and lifestyles from high school students too universities, and male or female.

Marketing Profitability Analysis

This analysis looks at the cost side of marketing and the productivity of products, sales territories, marketplace segments and sales people. There are three relations to check marketing productivity; they are market research to sales, advertising to sales and sales representatives to sales. The results of these three tools can help Coca Cola determine any emerging trends, such as the need for a different product. Comparing these results with actual results gives the commerce an idea on when to modify.

Market Research

When attempting to implement a new Marketing plan a business must address its target market and conduct the relevant information to insure the new marketing plan both differs from the old and is better for the business. When conducting market research a business must first define the problem and then gather the appropriate information to solve the problem. There are 3 types of information a business can gather to solve its problems.

->Exploratory Research which clarifies the problem an d searches for ways to address it.

->Descriptive Research is used to measure and describe things like the market potential for a product and characteristics of the target market.

->Casual Research is used to test a hypothesis about a cause and effect relationship.

Coca Cola through its market research has addressed all three types of research to define the problem raised by shareholders and gathered information to serve their needs.

Factors Influencing Consumer Choice

When making decisions on products a business must look at factors that influence consumer choice such as psychological factors, Socio-cultural factors, Economic factors and Government Factors. Psychological Factors: such as motivation, perception, lifestyle, personality and self concept, learning, and attitudes influence the consumers’ behaviour towards a product and Coca Cola has addressed this issue by introducing Diet Coke to satisfy different lifestyles. Socio-cultural factors: such as culture, subculture, socio-economic status, family and reference groups influence the consumers’ behaviour towards a product. Economic factors: such as Disposable income and discretionary income. Coca Cola has addressed this side of the influence by maintaining a low price on the price of its products. Government Factors: such as new regulations, inflation, interest rates all influence consumer spending and choice.

Task 3

Things I Learnt

The marketing planning process for the organization typically starts with identifying where your company is with respect to the significant issues. This evaluation serves as the foundation for planning. Your business has strategies even if it hasn’t done strategic planning. The key is to determine where you are on the circle or wheel of significant issues. Then you must determine what pieces are missing (Hooley, et al. 2001, P: 7-23).

As you move through the various stages or levels of a marketing plan’s evolution in the process of organization improvement, you should always look back to the preceding stage for validation. If you can identify clear “linkage” of the current stage’s tasks back to the preceding stage, your plan remains integrated. Each task must support a prior or higher-level task. If during the “look back” your task is an “orphan,” it is unnecessary or a prior-level task has been overlooked (Albrecht, 2000).

Benefit of marketing plan

The primary benefit of marketing plan for corporation is that it provides guidance and direction to management for the survival — a road map, so to speak. It enables the company to anticipate changes and be pro-active, rather than waiting and reacting. With a strategic plan, management is less likely to make short-term decisions which might be contradictory to long-term goals.

Marketing management for global market

Marketing plan for the global market penetration is an ongoing process — it’s “evergreen.” View the process like a wheel that has many significant issues and keeps going around. Each of the significant issues has to be frequently revisited. Some of the significant issues or “spokes” of the wheel include the foundation for planning, vision, values, purposes, missions, goals and objectives, resource allocations, work planning and integration to strategic management for the global market penetration. Each of the issues has sub-issues. For example, the foundation for planning requires a look at the owner’s motivations, market, organization (personnel and company culture), operational, financial and external factors (economic, competition and regulations) (Gruenfeld, 2005, P: 5-20).

The strategic planning process for the global market penetration typically starts with identifying where your company is with respect to the significant issues. This evaluation serves as the foundation for planning. Your business has strategies even if it hasn’t done strategic planning. The key is to determine where you are on the circle or wheel of significant issues. Then you must determine what pieces are missing.

As you move through the various stages or levels of a strategic plan’s evolution in the process of global market penetration, you should always look back to the preceding stage for validation. If you can identify clear “linkage” of the current stage’s tasks back to the preceding stage, your plan remains integrated. Each task must support a prior or higher-level task. If during the “look back” your task is an “orphan,” it is unnecessary or a prior-level task has been overlooked (Kaplan, & Norton, 2000, P: 71-79).

Your problem appears to be that your company viewed strategic planning as a result — or a “destination.” The planning is actually a circular, never-ending process or a “journey.” The strategic planning effort may be in place, but strategic management seems to be missing from your company. Strategic management is the ongoing process of meetings that relate back to the strategic planning framework. Consider what is working and what is not working. The meetings determine what has to be changed (Gudykunst, et al. 2000).

Conventional strategic approaches

Three conventional strategic styles have become synonymous with the relationship between the overall external environment and the strategy of the organization: Miles & Whittington (1978), Mintzberg & Waters (1985) and Gould & Campbell (1987). The Miles & Whittington typology, however, is unique because it views the organization as a complete and integrated system and presents a particularly useful theoretical framework for analysing the ways in which organizations dynamically interact with their environments (McDaniel & Kolari, 1987: 19) and has consequently generated a large amount of interest, investigation, controversy and support (Conant, Mokwa & Varadarajan, 1990: 365). It has enjoyed widespread application in strategy and has the ability to encapsulate strategy at a level of abstraction sufficient to apply across a wide variety of organizations and industries, including the public sector (Nutt & Bachoff, 1992: 73). It has furthermore been suggested that there is a general congruence between the Miles & Whittington typology and Porter’s generic competitive strategies, namely cost leadership and differentiation (Shortell & Zajac, 1990: 817). For the above-mentioned reasons it was decided to confine this investigation to the Miles & Snow typology of strategies (Kaplan, & Norton, 2002, P: 134-147).

Miles & Whittington (1978: 8-11) based their initial research on the following industries: college textbook publishing, electronics, food processing and hospitals. Their relatively complex strategic concept adopts the systems approach and proposes that organizational managers develop enduring patterns of strategic behaviour (identified as Prospectors, Defenders, Analyzers and Reactors) that actively co-align (or link) (adaptive cycle) the internal organizational domains (structure and process variables) of entrepreneurial, engineering and administrative with their perception of the external environment. Miles & Whittington thus extends the concept of ‘strategic choice’ in order to achieve fit as proposed by Child (1972) and by clear implication also accept Child’s view on the important moderating role played by political forces and power-holders in deciding upon the course of strategic action. Finally, Miles & Whittington suggested that any of the strategic behaviour types would perform (output performance) equally well in any industry, provided that the strategy is well implemented. Ostensibly this contention appears to be inconsistent with the generally accepted conventional view that a particular environment favours a certain type of strategic behaviour (Ham brick, 2004, P: 171-213).

Conclusion

In end, Coca-Cola is a winning product, not only since it has built a familiar logo and product name, but chiefly for the reason that it has administered to place its brand in a way that takes benefit of all the elements of promotion mix, i.e. product, place price and promotion/allocation. In doing so, it attains to expand a product character and differentiate itself from rivalry, while offering consumers an obvious view of its brand values. This leads to augmented brand loyalty and contentment.