Business Communication: Business Report
Introduction
Business communication encompasses a constant and consistent flow of complete information between workers and the management in an enterprise for commercial benefits (Newman 2014). Additionally, the term can also refer to the ways in which business disseminates information concerning products or services to existing and potential customers. Like any other aspect of communication, it is grounded on feedback to complete the process. Currently, organizations have adopted the trend of conducting business globally, which involves large numbers of employees as well as the market size (Hamilton and Webster 2015). Therefore, these hierarchical organizations with large labor force face managing challenges due to the workplace diversity. As such, effective business communication would serve as a bridge to manage the employees’ diversity as well as a means to understand the varied customer needs globally. Besides, proper and practical business communication model would help access feedback from the recipients, which helps in solving conflicts, misunderstanding and filling the gaps in the market with reliable communications. Internally, the superiors and their subordinates should engage effective communication for smooth flow of work progress through employees’ management programs.
Organizations are continually appreciating the essence of corporate social responsibilities, especially in their areas of operations. Therefore, communication can be quite useful in linking communities with the business enterprise. Likewise, there are social groups and trade unions that are in constant communication with the organizations and the employees concerning various issues in the industry that these organizations belong. Clearly, effective business communication is an important factor in determining the growth and productivity of an enterprise. Hence, business communication should be goal oriented. Considering that modern communication are varied and fast such as the social media, telephones, emails and teleconferencing among other advanced communication methods it makes it more feasible to invest in business communication. Therefore, the report analyzes the background of the Coca-Cola Company, the effectiveness of it hierarchical and structural management as well as the success of the business communication. Finally, the report will give the appropriate recommendation.
Background of Coca-Cola Company
Despite the fact that, food and beverage industry suffer saturation, and customers have shifted demand to the health and wellness products, Coca-Cola Company enjoys healthy balance sheet. Lifestyle diseases brought by bad eating choices such as fast food has created a negative corporate image, which requires resource and time to uplift. As such, the success of Coca-Cola Company is attributed to a well-thought marketing strategy that communicates effectively to its customers, thus, it enjoys customer loyalty and strong brand. More particularly, the company have operations in over 200 countries, offers approximately 500 brands and 3,000 beverage products globally (Nelson and Quick 2012). It is important to note that the company employs over 90,000 employees.
The Coca-Cola success can be approached from two major dimensions. Firstly, the internal corporate communication and the external, that is the marketing, employees, and customer approach. Factually, to manage such a large pool of employees, as is the case with the Coca-Cola Company lot of factors comes into play. As such, the internal communication is oriented to company objectives, which include implementation of the set goals and creation of the strong brand. Consequently, the company up scales its financial performance through achieving the strategic plans. Notably, the success starts with the internal communication since the goals have to be shared by the entire workers to align the employees’ synergy since they are depended upon to actualize the goals in all the departments such as the marketing, technology, finance, production and transport among others in the company.
The company had initially executed a hierarchical leadership and mechanistic approaches to aid in controlling the large pool of the employees, conduct aggressive marketing activities and continue expansion strategies (Klenke 2011). However, this approach attracted negative critics on the account that it was obsessed with acquiring the global market share rather than satisfying the needs of the local consumers.
Consequently, the preceding management adopted a more decentralized approach to cover the local consumer demands (Hill and Jones 2014). This had many benefits since it increased the horizontal communication, which applies to solve problems in the company as it occurs between the peers who interact more informally to produce healthy results. This strategy was important in creating a positive corporate image and increased brand awareness among the global consumers. There is a close link between the internal and external corporate communication. For instance, through this communication strategy, the company expanded exponentially to attain economies of scale. Therefore, health business communication helped the company acquire corporate identity which has created repeated sales years after it was conducted.
The second phase of business communication in this company involved customers, investors, and the immediate community as well as the wider society. Here, the company employs messages and attractive images to communicate with its stakeholders. This increases the perceptions of the stakeholders due to the visual awareness and their attractive nature. More specifically, the functions of the company such as the crisis management, human resource management as well as marketing rely heavily on the external business communications. External activities such as marketing facilitate the bond between the employees and customers as well as building internal unity. Thus, the business communication aims at building the link between the internal and external communication to earn the company commercial success.
Success of the business communication in the Coca-Cola Company
Agreeably, the general purpose of the business communication is to aid the management in oversight, coordination, and control of various activities within the company such as public relations, customer care desk, communication and the committees formed within the company to meet strategic plans (Thill, Bovée and Cross 2005). In other words, these orientations should enable both the external and internal communication to align with the specific goals of the organization. After that, the same approach was applied in building motivation among employees who execute these plans. Coca-Cola has been very successful in leaping the benefits of the corporate communications in a couple of ways that has consequently improved its financial performance.
It has increased the sales of the through ‘share Coke' campaign. The sales campaign entailed sales promotion of coke products with random but popular customer names on the can and bottle labels (Simpson 2014). This mode of corporate to marketing to the customers has led to huge sales since they are unique and attractive especially to the millennia who adore identity and personalization (Greenfield 2008). Moreover, the imagination depicted in this form of corporate communication through marketing has created brand awareness throughout the world, which is a way of marketing. The customer took “selfie” with the Coca-Cola products and posted them on the social media. Additionally, the customers shared these photos and thus, they conducted marketing as ambassadors of Coca-Cola Company (Groysberg and Slind 2012). The photos below explain the corporate communication in the marketing campaign of the Coca-Cola Company.
Source: http://www.allthingsic.com/coke/
Additionally, the share Coke campaign was ingrained in the spirit of the employees, which boosted their loyalty, satisfaction, and job fulfillment. The employees in various countries shared the coke with their colleagues. This has several benefits to the employees and the organization at large. Firstly, the employees are engaged in the horizontal communication that enables them to share their experiences and contribution to the company in an informal setting. Consequently, they can come up with other creative ways to share the coke, which increase the sales. Moreover, when the employees are satisfied, the level of turnover decreases in the company. This lowers the expenses of training new workers to replace those resigning as well those changing jobs. Thus, retaining experiences workers who are more satisfied increases the productivity of the entire workforce. Additionally, the employees’ motivation helps in imprinting a health corporate culture that will enable the new workers to identify with the company. The company improved its corporate image through the internal business communication exhibited by its workers as they shared the coke. The photos below show employees sharing a coke in different countries where Coca-Cola Company has operations.
Clearly, the impact of the Coca-Cola Company business communication as shown by the share Coke campaign in both the internal and external platforms brought benefits. In each case, the marketing campaign contributed significantly to the welfare of the entire company (Black 2012). Thus, the communication was successful since it increased the products consumption all over the world. However, the campaign faced several challenges despite its massive success. It received negative criticism pointing that the names seemed to come from some continents such as Europe, and the campaign was not as keen in African countries in comparison with European nations.
Source: http://www.allthingsic.com/coke/
Recommendations
Business communication is an important factor in driving business growth as well as amplifying the individual goals for the department in an organization. The Coca-Cola Company study case has led to several recommendations that are quite important to the business organizations. Firstly, owing to the fact that business communication is a bridge between the internal and external communications, that is, through effective communication with the workforce, an organization can rely on their expertise to pass across the information to the target consumers. Thus, the organization should ensure that the communication experts are well equipped to attain the full benefits of the business communication. Additionally, business communication is an investment, and the organization should allocate enough resources to the activity.
Business communication concerning the external audience can serve as a marketing tool that creates brand awareness to other potential customers through the social media and other platforms. Therefore, the business should create attractive visual marketing tools that will induce the customers to feel part of the corporate society and be its ambassadors. Finally, the business communication should collect timely and accurate feedback from its customers. This will aid the business in correcting the limitations highlighted by customers as well as producing products that completely meet their demands. Consequently, the business will win the customer loyalty and the consequential benefits. On the other hand, the employees’ satisfaction due to the effective communication will help the organization realize its full potentials.
References
Black, K. (2012). Business statistics: for contemporary decision making. Hoboken, NJ, Wiley.
Greenfield, S. (2008). I.D.: the quest for identity in the 21st century. [S.l.], Sceptre.
Groysberg, B., & Slind, M. (2012). Talk, inc.: how trusted leaders use conversation to power their organizations. http://www.books24x7.com/marc.asp?bookid=47513.
Hamilton, L., & Webster, P. (2015). The international business environment
Hill, C. W. L., & Jones, G. R. (2014). Strategic management: theory: an integrated approach.
Klenke, K. (2011). Women in leadership: contextual dynamics and boundaries. Bingley, UK, Emerald Group Pub.
Nelson, L., & Quick, J. C. (2012). Organizational' behavior: science, the real' world, and you. Mason, Ohio, South-Western.
Newman, A. (2014). Business communication: in person, in print, online. [Place of publication not identified], Cengage Learning.
Simpson, A. (2014). The brand strategist's guide to desire: how to give consumers what they want. http://www.palgraveconnect.com/doifinder/10.1057/9781137351821.
Thill, J. V., Bovée, C. L., & Cross, A. (2005). Excellence in business communication. Toronto, Pearson/Prentice Hall.
