24.11.2014
Beverage Marketing Plan: The Coca Cola Company
Introduction
A marketing strategy is typically considered successful if it produces the right product and delivers it to the right customers, at an appropriate time and price, and Coca Cola has strived to deliver these aims through strategic marketing. Known as the world’s largest beverage company, the Coca Cola Company has strived to satisfy its consumers by selling more than five hundred brands in more than two hundred countries worldwide (“Coca-Cola At A Glance: KO101 Video and Infographic.”). The company’s flagship product is Coca Cola, more commonly known as Coke, which was first introduced in the market in 1886 (“Coca Cola at a Glance”). The company sells over thirty-five hundred products worldwide, with a portfolio encompassing almost seventeen billion-dollar brands, including Schweppes, Fanta, Sprite, Dasani, and Minute Maid. The Company itself his humungous, with nearly two-fifty bottling partners and nine hundred manufacturing plants spread throughout the world. In addition, there are almost twenty-three million retail consumer outlets worldwide! Coca Cola is also involved in environmental protection. It has prevented over five million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions since 2004 and recovered nearly four hundred pounds of aluminum and PET plastic beverage containers (“Coca Cola at a Glance”). Its community water partnership projects are benefitting more than two million people in over hundred countries.
With such remarkable progress, Coca Cola recognizes that the world is challenging and fast-moving, and in order to thrive it is imperative for the Company to foresee the challenges and prepare for them beforehand. The Company’s 2020 Vision is famous for laying out a long-term destination for the business, providing a route which it will be taking to win. Apart from making profits through selling, Coke promulgates ideas such as spreading happiness and optimism, and making a difference in the world, and these associations are key factors that have led to the company’s marketing success. A few of the values demonstrated perfectly by the Company include leadership, collaboration, accountability, diversity, passion, and quality. To achieve this fame, Coke has strived hard to underscore the needs of its customers by listening to them and executing its production and transactions in a way that would quickly respond to the consumers’ changing needs and satiate them.
The famous Responsible Marketing Charter lays out a set of principles intended to guide the Company’s approach to marketing efficiently. Some key rules found in the charter include that drinks will not be sold to children under twelve to enable parents to make informed choices which would serve their children best, and that the Company will not partner with films screened in cinemas for the same reason. The Company has launched a massive Responsible Marketing Network online to allow marketing practitioners to collaborate and actively discuss the best marketing practices and solve marketing-related issues (“Responsible Marketing Strategies”).
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
The SWOT analysis comprises strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The Coca Cola Company has several strengths. As mentioned earlier, the Company was awarded the best global brand in the world award in terms of value (“Coca-Cola at a Glance: KO101 Video and Infographic.”). The Company has strong marketing and advertising strategies which strive to increase its sales and brand recognition globally. Moreover, Coca Cola sells its products at convenient prices, depending on the consumers it is catering to, rendering it available to a large population worldwide. With an immensely extensive distribution channel, Coca Cola products are sold in more than two hundred countries, as mentioned earlier. It also fulfills Corporate Social Responsibility by initiating and participating in projects which promote recycling, energy conservation, nutritional ways of living, and many others, thereby securing an advantage over its competitors. Lastly, Coca Cola’s customer loyalty and immense bargaining power over suppliers render it a leader in the beverage market. Coca Cola has received numerous accolades, being called the Most Admired Company by Fortune, among the Top 20 Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, and among the Top 50 Most Diverse Companies by Diversity Inc. (“Coca-Cola At A Glance: KO101 Video and Infographic.”). Moreover, it has also been labeled the World’s Most Valuable Brand by Interbrand, and the number one brand on Facebook with over seventy-one million likes.
Weaknesses
Despite the plethora of strengths, however, the Company has a few weaknesses which it needs to focus on. Firstly, the Company primarily sells carbonated drinks such as Coca Cola, Sprite, and Fanta. While this is profitable in the short-run, the sales of these beverages is likely to fall in the future as people, especially in the developed world, become aware of the need to live healthy lives and fight obesity to prevent health-related issues and expenses in the nation. Moreover, the Company has a narrow market, focusing entirely on beverages, and perhaps it would benefit by expanding into other markets by introducing other food products. The Company has many brands, most of which are not generating profits. It needs to shut down brands that consumers have not developed a liking for, like C2 drink, and focus more on brands that consumers like.
Opportunities
Among the numerous opportunities that the Coca Cola Company holds, on is the likely increase in the consumption of bottled water. The company has also introduced numerous low-calorie products, whose consumption is likely to soar as the world expedites its fight against obesity and unhealthy-living, and yet is unwilling to give up on the consumption of carbonated drinks. Technological advancement also offers many prospects in terms of producing, packaging, and distributing efficiently in terms of producing products of the same quality, yet at lower prices.
Threats
Some of the threats posed to the Company’s success include the increase in health-consciousness worldwide, which is likely to result in many consumers shifting to un-carbonated, low-calorie beverages. An emerging scarcity of water in many parts of the world also poses a threat since water is the main raw material of Coca Cola’s beverages. Also, many of the products sold by Coca Cola have negative consequences on consumers’ health. This has prompted many governments to pass rules and legislations that would make it mandatory for the Company to disclose the contents of the drinks on product labels so that consumers are well aware of what they are ingesting and how it can harm them in the long run. To better equip itself for the future, the Coca Cola Company is also expanding its products range by introducing low-calorie carbonated drinks to retain consumers in the future, especially by increasing the use of natural sweeteners in its drinks (“The Coca Cola Company”, 2). However, as the world recognizes the drawbacks of sweeteners, it is likely that Coca Cola will suffer once again and might be compelled to switch to even healthier alternatives. As raw materials such as water become scarcer, the Company’s costs of production are rising, thereby reducing gross profits and net profit margins. Coca Cola also has a major competitor named PepsiCo in BRIC countries.
4 Ps of Marketing
For any marketing plan to succeed, the four P’s of marketing must ideally be met. These include product, place, price, and promotion. These four factors add up to form the “marketing mix” which takes into account the product’s quality, consumer value, and consumer satisfaction among other aspects ("The Four P's of Marketing.").
Product
Products are defined as goods and services that a business provides for sale to the target market (The Economic Times).A successfully delivered product must possess certain characteristics, including quality, innovative design, good features, safe packaging, customer service, and after-sales service, if any. The Company sells numerous products that efficiently target consumers who would be willing and able to buy them. Its products have exceptional quality, design, and packaging, all of which add to its success.
Place
The place is important to be considered for distribution of the product, the location and the demand for the product over there, and the means of delivering the product there at the minimum cost. Among other things, the location of the company’s shop, distributors, and logistics should be clear and favorable. Coca Cola has many outlets which are well-distributed across the world, in both developed and developing countries. This enables the market to be spread globally and the product to be sold in widespread areas and very efficiently.
Price
The price refers to the amount of money that consumers must pay in order to buy the product. Several factors must be considered while setting the price, for instance, the type of economy the product is sold in. The price set by the Coca Cola Company typically takes into account the target market and the potential consumers. Most beverages sold by the Company are inexpensive and accessible to a large proportion of the world’s population.
Promotion
Promotion implies the act the relaying the advantages of the product’s consumption to potential buyers in order to persuade them to buy it. Advertising and sales promotion come under this component. The Coca Cola Company incorporates all the four P’s of the marketing mix into its marketing strategy. The Coca Cola Company focuses a lot on the promotion of its products via innovative advertising campaigns and other programs such as brand ambassadorships to promote the consumption of its beverages in relevant markets. By efficaciously utilizing the four P’s to succeed in the market for beverages, the Company stresses on solutions, access to its products, value of its products, and promotion. Most of its strategies are successful because they take a consumer-centric approach and reflect the needs of the consumers (Ettenson, Richard, and Conrado).
Conclusion
The Coca Cola Company is the leading company in the beverages industry and the statistics mentioned above are indicative of its success over the past few years. I chose it for my marketing analysis because of the plenty of research that exists on how the company operates. Other companies in the beverage industry are also striving hard to succeed and boost profits, but Coca Cola continues to emerge as the most popular brand. Owing to the diverse and novel strategies adopted by the Company to directly identify and fulfill the needs of its consumers, it has achieved much success. Coca Cola’s marketing plan is much more extensive than that of many of its competitors, and an in-depth analysis of it can set an example for other businesses to use it as a model and form their own strategies.
Works Cited
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