Marketing Assignment: Case Analysis Of Coca Cola

Question

Task:
Case Study for Marketing Assignment
The following Case study refers to the collaboration of Coca Cola and the App Anni developed by Coca Cola, the famous and much-loved beverage brand that enjoys global fame and success due to their excellent marketing branding strategies and unique taste. The success of this company is phenomenal comprising of several other subsidiary trade bands bearing its name. Their diversification over the years into technology was also remarkable as they developed into a tech-savvy modern company largely due to their innovative marketing strategies and market analysis. Provide an analysis on the latest apps namely; the Coca-Cola Freestyle app for customers and the Coke Notify App for retailers to indicate the challenges faced with developing these and how they overcame the challenges to achieve remarkable success.

1. Analyse the background of the company and the challenges they face in a changing and challenging business world; and also, within the company, in order to break through the barriers to maintain their success by addressing innovate change.
2. Provide insight into the marketing plan adopted by the company to ensure their success with emphasis on the tools, strategies and plans used to penetrate the markets and ensure profitability.
3. Analyse the current issues/concepts that are relevant to and potentially impact the international marketing environment. Explain the innovative strategies and tools adopted as well as its impact on the company in relation to branding.
4. Demonstrate a critical understanding of one of the marketing models used in order to evaluate the benefits of that model for the company; and, evaluate the influence of the changing business environment on the marketing priorities and marketing management functions of the organisation that influence consumer behaviour contributes to its success.
5. Discuss how a SWOT ANALYSIS and PESTLE contributed to the growing success of the brand towards influencing customer behaviour and optimising their product sales and excellent service delivery.
6. Explain how the diversification into collaboration and development of App Anni caused the company to maintain their success in the face of adversity and challenges especially since technology is advancing rapidly.

Answer

1. Background of Coca Cola
Coca Cola is a world-famous beverage brand. The company started when Coca Cola syrup was produced by Dr. John Pemberton. Initially, the syrup was produced and sold as a fountain drink. However, the bottling started from the year 1899 (Serôdio, McKee and Stuckler, 2018). The rights for bottling and selling Coca Cola in the United States were secured by Joseph B. Whitehead and Benjamin F. Thomas. Since, its beginning Coca Cola as a brand has been growing constantly, adapting to the changes in the internal as well as external environment. They have optimised their resource allocation and increased their revenues. Their primary product was carbonated soft drinks. However, with changing times they have diversified into a vast range of beverages.

The company was formally introduced in the year 1916. From the same year, its iconic bottle started being bottled, which is used even today. In 1928, Robert Woodruff expanded the business of Coca Cola to overseas locations. In the same year, Coca Cola was introduced at the Olympic Games. In the 1980s, the attitude of people towards unhealthy drinks started changing. Thus, diet coke was introduced by the company to meet the needs of the customers (Tran, 2021). Since 1980s, Coca Cola has been expanding rapidly. During those days, every year the company expanded and entered a new country. At present, 94 percent of the global population recognises Coca Cola as a brand.

Challenges faced by Coca Cola
As a company, Coca Cola is facing several challenges due to the changes taking place in the global business environment. To maintain the success, the company is trying to break through the barriers and constantly encouraging innovation. They are also facing some internal drawbacks within the company.

2. Marketing Plan
The marketing plan of Coca Cola can be illustrated using the marketing mix. An effective marketing plan incorporates the marketing tactics and use of strategic tools. The four most essential aspects of the marketing mix are product, price, place and promotion (Pomering, 2017). The marketing plan of Coca Cola has been designed to satisfy the needs of the target consumers and to realise the marketing goals. To remain relevant and to sustain in an ever-changing competitive market, Coca Cola had to monitor and amend its marketing plan over the years. The marketing plan of Coca Cola keeps the internal as well as external factors in mind to maximise the returns from the business.

Product: To get an added edge over its competitors, Coca Cola is trying to diversify and expand its range of products. The product mix of Coca Cola includes soft drinks, i.e., their primary carbonated drinks, juices, energy drinks, sports drinks, water, etc. The company realised that through product diversification, they can have a competitive advantage as well as increase their revenue streams (ABBASI, 2017). Through constant innovation, the company is trying to enhance the taste and quality of its products. They are open to customer feedbacks based on which they try to improve. This has facilitated consistent growth of the brand over the years.

Price: Coca Cola has adopted an aggressive pricing policy which has helped it to sustain in the market. They have priced their products in such a way that they can sustain even while facing intense competition from its close rival, Pepsi and other local brands. They have kept economy packs for various products, which are lowly priced and attracts cost conscious consumers. The company has been following competition-based pricing strategy so that the consumers buy their products instead of their substitutes from the rivals.

Place: Place is a very crucial aspect of the marketing plan. It is the location from where the customers can get the product. Basically, the place here is the distribution channel through which the products of Coca Cola will reach the market. Coca Cola products are mainly available in retail stores, supermarkets as well as online stores. The place utility becomes a deciding factor for the consumers to purchase a product among multiple options.

Promotion: Coca Cola has used various channels for advertising and promoting their brand. They have advertised their products through T.V, social media and print media (Moravcikova and Kliestikova, 2017). They have also used direct marketing and interactive marketing. The other modes of promotion include public relations, publicity and personal selling. This has facilitated branding. The company has concentrated on positioning of their brand. They tried to create a clear image in the mind of their target customers. This has helped Coca Cola to emerge as the strongest beverage brand in the global market.

3. Factors affecting International Marketing Environment
To sustain in the global market, the companies need to take into consideration several factors which specifically impact the international marketing environment.

As stated by Kim, Moon and Iacobucci (2019), Coca Cola being a global brand is impacted by factors like culture of a country where it intends to sell its products. Not all countries were equally accepting towards a carbonated soft drink. For example, the rural areas of India and Pakistan for long and to some extent even today prefers local drinks like Chhas and Lassi over soft drinks. The people of China and Japan are quite health conscious and not very much interested in carbonated drinks.

The socio-economic structure of the country where the products are being introduced affects the business of Coca Cola. The economic condition of the developing nations is much lower than that of the U.S, where the drink was initially introduced (Gbadamosi, 2019). Thus, it took time for developing nations to accept and adapt to such beverages. Even if the people wanted to consume such beverages like Coke, their pockets pinched them and prevented them from purchasing such drinks.

The political, legal and competitive structure of the country also affects the business. Technology is another very important factor that impacts the international business. It is very important for the technology of the country to support the business processes, like distribution, manufacturing, promotions, etc.

Coca Cola needs to consider each of these international factors before making any business decisions.

Innovation and Branding
Innovation is a very important aspect of branding.

• As per Poticha and Duncan (2019), the company believes that innovation should be beyond extensions of flavours.
• The innovation could be related to diversifying and developing new product range. It could also be tech-driven innovation. The company has been trying to analyse the data derived from the market and developing their business according to the market requirements. The innovations of Coca Cola are mostly customer-centric.
• The company has been innovating to enhance their formulas. They have also tried to improve their packaging.
• The company has been trying to conver its strategies towards developing the global marketing strategy of One Brand. They have united all its products including Diet Coca Cola, Coca Cola Zero, Coca Cola and Coca Cola Life under the banner of One Brand.
• They have also developed an innovative campaign titled ‘Taste the Feeling’ (de Medeiros and de Almeida Souza, 2018). These are all part of innovation of Coca Cola.
• Coca Cola has also been innovative in its digital marketing. The brand has used the digital technology for creating new experiences for the consumers. Their innovative digital marketing plans include the programs like sip and scan. This program allows the consumers to unlock prizes and experiences. They can avail the prizes by scanning the icons on the packages of Coke with the help of their mobile phones.
• The Coca Cola Freestyle mobile app is an innovation by the company for enhancing the branding. This app helps the operators to provide better beverage experience. This can be done without the involvement of the crew members. Through this app, The Coca Cola Freestyle locations are distinguished from the other locations that have no dispenser with such attributes like location finder.
• The other app which is an innovation of Coca Cola is the Coke Notify app for retailers. Through this app, the bottler associates of Coca Cola can submit their requests for equipment service (Schneider, Hilger-Kolb and Mata, 2020). However, only the authorised retailers have access to the Coke Notify app. The app is used by the employees of the Coca Cola Company and the ones who have been given the express permission by the company.

Innovations foster better branding of a company. Through innovation, strategic planning and effective marketing tools, Coca Cola has made its place in the international market. For an international brand like Coca Cola, innovation is needed for maintaining their brand position and giving a tough competition to their rivals. Coca Cola, over the years has faced and overcome several challenges and crisis. However, through new ideas, concepts and innovative moves, the company has ensured success for itself in the global market.

4. Business Model
According to Kayabaº, Boyraz and Derdiyok (2017), among the most valuable brands of the world, Coca Cola holds the third position. The company is one of the most successful global brands. The products of Coca Cola are offered in every country for sale. In fact, they managed to enter Cuba and North Korea. The company has followed a marketing model that has been designed uniquely to boost the international recognition of the brand. The marketing strategies of Coca Cola are based on its marketing mix. The 4P’s are very important for Coca Cola to plan its business. Product, Place, Price and Promotion has been the deciding factors of Coca Cola’s success in business. Besides, the marketing model of Coca Cola has also included some other significant factors. The business canvas model of Coca Cola gives an insight into its process which helps it to sustain in the changing global business environment and address the changing consumer preferences.

Product: Coca Cola has realised that to succeed and sustain in the market it needs to diversify and have a huge range of products. The following products are manufactured and sold by Coca Cola: Coca Cola, Diet Coke, Coca Cola Life, Coca Cola Zero, Coca Cola Light, Sprite, Minute Maid, Fanta, Ciel, Dasani, Fresco, Simply Orange, Fuze Tea, Powerade Zero, Honest Tea, etc (Lacy-Nichols, Scrinis and Carey, 2018).

Classic Bottle: In 1915, Coca Cola introduced a competition for new bottle designing. This was a marketing strategy for defence (Miller, 2021). The company wanted to prove that they are a premium brand and way above the local cola producing companies. The outcome of the bottle contest was an appealing and strange shaped bottle. The bottle of Coke eventually became an icon.

Logo: The logo of Coca Cola was decided to be written in Spencerian script during 1923 (Pendergrast and Crawford, 2020). This was mainly to make the brand different from the competitors. The packaging has changed and adapted with the changing times. However, the logo and font along with the recipe remains unchanged for Coca Cola. The logo and font of Coca Cola is imprinted in the memory of the global customers as it has remained the same for more than 100 years now.

Pricing: Coca Cola had a fixed price and did not want to change it until it faced tough competition from its close rival, Pepsi. As Pepsi increased its prices, Coca Cola had to increase its price. They feared that people would consider their quality to be inferior and hence lowly priced. To maintain the quality price relationship as perceived by consumers, Coca Cola had to increase its prices.

Consistent: After so many years, even after gaining huge success in their business at the global platform, Coca Cola has remained consistent in its marketing strategy and brand message. They want to communicate their brand objective to offering pleasure to their customers. They have simple slogans like ‘enjoy’, ‘happiness’, ‘you can’t beat the feeling’, etc. which have enabled the global customers to associate with the brand (UNCU and ÇALI?IR, 2019).

Besides, the company has concentrated on personalisation, smart use of social media for promotions, maintaining global outreach etc. Their main aim is to create a better experience for their customers.

5. SWOT

PESTEL
Political factors: As per Kalashnikov and Lutsenko (2020), the changes in the nations’ laws and regulations, changes in the terms of business for non-alcoholic beverages, political condition of the country where it is operating and the regulations of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are some of the political factors that impact the business of Coca Cola.

Economic factors: The employment rate of a country where it has its business, the economic growth of nation, monetary policies, consumer confidence, inflation rate and fluctuations in different currencies are some of the economic factors that affects the global business of Coca Cola (Zhavoronkova, Miziuk and Zhavoronkov, 2020).

Social factors: As Coca Cola produces drinks for pleasure of the customers, the lifestyle factors, demographic influence and income distribution affects its business.

Technological factors: The changes in technology across the world, the innovation of new techniques and machinery and influence of international know-hows are some of the technological factors influencing the business of Coca Cola.

Environmental factors: The attitude of customers towards carbonated or unhealthy beverages, the concern for environment and water wastage, the environmental regulations, etc. affect the business of Coca Cola (Bista, 2019).

Legal factors: Among the legal factors, the taxation policies, the food and beverage industry regulations, health and safety regulations, impact the business of Coca Cola.

6. Coca Cola and App Annie
The global customers consume the products of Coca Cola around 1.7 billion times per day, accounting for 19,400 drinks per second (Kumar and Mittal, 2020). Most of the consumers of this multifaceted brand associate with it at secondary outlets like stadiums or grocery stores. Thus, proper data on consumers or marketing opportunities and challenges is required by the brand. Coca Cola is partnering with different retailers and optimizing their own app as well. Coca Cola depends on App Annie for its intelligence and dataset. The data from App Annie helps the company to gain actionable data which gives a clearer picture of the digital landscape.

Coca Cola uses this data from App Annie to understand the optimisation of keywords, colour schemes, etc. that is seen in the media buys’ screenshots. The science is added to the marketing strategies of Coca Cola through the dataset of App Annie. Coca Cola uses the data from App Annie for varied purposes. The data from App Annie is vital for learning and development of Coca Cola. It drives the company and its customers forward (GaYÁ, 2017). The app enhances the experience of mobile ordering for food services, engages the customers in user base and new features, etc. App Annie’s data brings about bottom-line growth in Coca Cola Company, while enhancing consumer experience and strengthening the distribution network. Therefore, it can be said that Coca Cola is dependent on App Annie for delighting and amazing its customers and maintaining best standards of marketing.

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