Product Overview

Coca Cola refers to an American Corporation which is the marketer of the non-alcoholic beverage syrups. The company is popular for the flagship product by the name of Coca Cola. Coca Cola is the name of a soft drink that is carbonated which was invented in the 19^th century. It was invented by John Pemberton that was later on bought by the businessman called Asa Griggs Candler (Coca-cola.com.au 2018).  It was available at the outset in Jacob’s Pharmacy in the form of soda fountain drink that comprised of Coca-Cola syrup along with carbonated water. The marketing tactics of the business man helped in making Coca Cola dominant in that of the soft drink market. The name of the drink refers to the original ingredients that are coca leaves and the kola nuts. The drink contains carbonated water, sugar, caffeine, phosphoric acid and the natural flavorings that provides it with a distinct taste. The unique taste of the product has made the fast moving consumer good product, Coca Cola popular in the world market. Coca Cola has emerged as the soft drink that is hugely popular in the market. Coca Cola helps in refreshing the body, mind and the spirit of an individual. A can of the product Coca Cola comprises of 38 gram of the sugar, 50 mg of that of sodium, O gram fat along with 140 calories.

Coca Cola makes use of the mass marketing strategy that can help it in catering to the tastes of the diverse range of the customers. Coca Cola makes use of radio and the television marketing so that it can reach a larger audience (Menon et al. 2015). Coca Cola uses the posters, banners and the text advertisements so that it can reach out to a large number of people. The large market potential helps in bringing tremendous sales volume in relation to the target brand. Coca Cola lays emphasis on the aspect of innovation and innovates the products and services so that it can it can stay ahead in the competition.  It makes use of the marketing strategy of niche marketing for the purpose of driving sales within the competitive market. The diet coke helps in targeting the niche segment of the people who are more conscious about their health. The pricing of Coca Cola is done on the basis of market and the geographical segment. There are various pricing strategies for the sub-brands of Coca Cola. The pricing strategy of Coca Cola is on the basis of pricing of the competitors. Pepsi acts as the direct competitor in relation to Coke. Beverage market can be said to be a oligopoly market and cartel contracts are formed by the companies for ensuring mutual balance in the aspect of pricing among the sellers (Solomon et al. 2014). 

Marketing Strategy of Coca Cola

Coca Cola takes recourse to promotional strategies so that the demand of the product would increase in the market. Coca Cola associates with the lifestyle along with behaviour and it targets value based advertising for reaching out to the target audience. The advertisements of Coca Cola are individualised on the basis of festivals that helps in attracting the attention of a large number of consumers. The advertisements of Coca Cola come with a positive message that has helped it in evolving as popular brand in market. Coca Cola makes use of Corporate Social Responsibility as the marketing tool that that helps it in gaining emotional benefits in the mind of the consumers (Baker 2014). Coca Cola carries out “Support my school” campaigns that helps in appealing emotionally to the customers. Coca Cola allows the price discounts and hence sales promotions are made use of by the Company for pushing the products in the market. Coca Cola makes use of push strategy for marketing and it achieves this with the help of promotions. Coca Cola also makes use of the pull strategy by taking recourse to advertisements along with campaigns.

Advertisements:  The advertising of Coca Cola has been prolific within the marketing history and the advertisement campaigns of the popular brand has a huge amount of appeal on the society. The bottle design along with logo of the brand can be immediately recognized across the world and is crucial for the brand image of the company.  It makes use of aggressive advertising campaign for reaching out to people (Armstrong et al. 2015). Coca Cola makes use of television for the purpose of gaining good market coverage that helps it to appeal to the senses of the consumers. The company also gives the advertisements in the magazines which helps it in selecting the customers on the basis of demography.

Public Relations: Coca Cola includes a press center at the website that helps it handling public relations. The press releases and the statements of the company in the website helps in promoting the popular brand called Coca Cola. The statements help Coca Cola in addressing the law suits and the rumours. An important public relations activity which is carried out by company pertains to that of responsible corporate governance. The company is instrumental in sponsoring various workshops along with conferences that educates the policy makers in America to bring in practical policies that will have an effect on the business (Jaworski 2018). The company takes part in environment conservation effort that helps in spreading popularity in relation to the company.

Marketing Communication Mix of Coca Cola

Direct Marketing:  Coca Cola makes use of vendor company partnerships that helps it in attaining exclusivity. There are restaurants along with movie theatres that offers only the products of Coke that helps in the elimination of any kind of direct competition. Sporting events are sponsored by the brand that offers the attendant consumers the sole products in relation to the brand (Lusch and Vargo 2014). This paves the path for the facilitation of one-to-one sales to the clients who are important and are seated in the reserved areas. Coca Cola takes the help of mobile marketing that sends out the text messages that helps in personalizing the promotions.  They also depend on that of the word-of-the-mouth communication that helps it in gaining brand loyalists.

Social Media Marketing:  Crowd-sourced content along with direct engagement act as the hallmark in relation to social media marketing of Coca Cola. Coca Cola is instrumental in focussing on web based interactive marketing by using banners and the public relations. The website content of Coca Cola lays importance on the new products, sporting events and the online games (Wensley 2016).  The stories of Coca Cola are published on various social media platform like Twitter, Linked In and Face Book that can help in driving traffic to their website.

Sales Promotion: The sales promotion of Coca Cola aims at the two strategies: retail and the food service. The retail efforts of the company are directed towards partnerships, point-of-sale technique and that of direct store delivery. There are exclusive company partnerships where the restaurants only offers the Coke products that helps in the elimination of competition (Bamossy and Solomon 2016).  Direct store delivery acts as the important link in relation to value chain. The company pays attention to the aspect of mobile advertising and the red delivery trucks of the company have the brand logo that helps in attracting many consumers.

The different factors like age, sex, emotions and the community have an effect on the aspect of consumer behaviour. It was found in Assignment 2 that the young people tend to prefer Coca Cola more than the old people. The young people in the present age are more conscious about their health that makes them have selective products of Coca Cola. The advertisements of Coca Cola on television and the magazines helps in drawing many people towards the popular brand. The young people in the modern age makes use of social media and the promotion on the social media platform can help in targeting the millennial population (East et al. 2016).  The niche marketing employed by the company helps in attracting the young generation towards the popular brand. It brings out products that take care of the aspect of health that caters to the needs of people in the present age. The female population are conscious about their weight (as found in Assignment 2) and hence product like Diet Coke can appeal to them. The people vising the retail outlets and the shopping malls can get to know more about the brand in the event of these places employing the point of sales technique. The people who are working at the office will buy the 250 ml instead of the 450 ml owing to their busy schedule. The posters and the hoardings made use by Coca Cola will help more people in gaining knowledge about the unique properties of the brand. There are restaurants and cinema halls that only sell Coca Cola and the people coming to these places will have the only option that can increase consumer base in relation to the product (Foxall 2014). This can eliminate competition for Coca Cola and pave the path for increasing the demand of the fast moving consumer product. The website of Coca Cola contains all the necessary information pertaining to the brand. The people in the present era are conversant with technology and hence the website will help more number of people in getting to know important information about the product of Coca Cola (De Mooij 2018).

Coca Cola should take recourse to segmented revenue growth strategies in the course of their business. They should increase the volume in relation to the products and make the beverage affordable that can help it in attending to the needs of diverse population. The theory of Marshallian Economics, states that consumers purchase the goods along with services that offers them the most amount of personal satisfaction (Arena 2016).   It states that pricing of the product being in the lower side can help in increasing sales of a product. On the basis of this theory, it can be stated that increasing quantity of the products can decrease the price that can help in making the product popular in market. In the developing markets they should strike a balance in between the volume and the pricing that can help in marketing of the soft drink. They can increase their profitability by offering packages that are small (Bakopoulos, Stuart and Briggs 2016). They can make use of premium packaging for the marketing of their products.

Coca Cola should invest continuously that can help them in the arena of better marketing. They can increase spending on the aspect of media advertising and create impactful advertisements that can have a deep impact on the minds of the customer. They should make investment in their expansive beverage portfolio. They can make partnerships that can help in improving their position in the present market. They can make campaigns that lays stress on the taste and the factor of refreshment that can spread influence of brand in market (Steenkamp 2017).  They can make use of “one brand” strategy that can help the consumers in knowing that the consumers can have the drink in various forms ( with calories or without calories) on the basis of their particular demand.

Coca Cola Company has created various kinds of refreshing beverage brands. They can create bottling partners that can help them in creating value in relation to the retail and the restaurant customers. The bottling partners can help in improving their performance and in optimizing the manufacturing along with distribution systems. It can help in the arena of refranchising bottling territories back into that of the independent status (Jackson and Ahuja 2016). They can form unified bottling partner in the various regions of Western Europe, Indonesia and the China that can help in the promotion in the different countries in the world.

The non-alcoholic beverage industry has undergone a lot of changes in the recent years. Coca Cola can reshape their business that can help in marketing of the soft drink called Coca Cola. They should change the operating structure of their company that can help them in functioning in an efficient manner (Fulgoni 2015).  They can remove a layer pertaining to functional management that can help in connecting the regional business unit directly to that of the headquarters. They can streamline significant internal process that can help in removing roadblocks in relation to marketing. This can help them in being effective and responsive to needs of consumer.

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