Business Level Strategy of Coca Cola
Business Level Strategy of Coca Cola
Introduction
In today’s business environment, business strategy plays a crucial role to the organizations in order to achieve the competitive advantage over the other competitors. Coca Cola Company is one of the business organisations facing a fierce competition in the global market with Pepsi, its major competitor, in addition, the company has to deal with the significant threats such as a health concerns, apparently an increasing trend among society nowadays. This trend has posed a tough task for beverage manufacturers, especially the Coca Cola Company. Yet, this soft drink company still gains profits with a growing number of customers in over 200 countries (Taylor,2000). Over the past few years, a great many strong and innovative strategies has been launched so as to maintain its long term sustainability amongst the fast changing trend. Four important strategies of Coke Company will be analysed in either Western or Chinese markets. Differentiation strategy Differentiation has considerably assisted Coca Cola in achieving the competitive advantage in China. Coke has differentiated its products on the two dimensions. The first dimension is related to its products. Coca Cola diversifies its products on the basis of taste, brand and quality. In 2009, Coke Zero was launched and advertised as “zero calorie” to the global market in order to target a group of customers concerned about the excessive amount of sugar contained in classic coke. As a result, Coca-Cola commanded 17% of the U.S. soft drink market in 2009 while Pepsi held only 9.9% (Mok, 2010). Another differentiation strategy is related to images of the products. It is used by logo which establishes a brand name in the consumers’ mind. Since Coke zero is specifically marketed to men, the design of logo has to be masculinity unique. The design of coke zero has a black background which stands for men, original red Coca Cola logo with white color of word ZERO underneath
Introduction
In today’s business environment, business strategy plays a crucial role to the organizations in order to achieve the competitive advantage over the other competitors. Coca Cola Company is one of the business organisations facing a fierce competition in the global market with Pepsi, its major competitor, in addition, the company has to deal with the significant threats such as a health concerns, apparently an increasing trend among society nowadays. This trend has posed a tough task for beverage manufacturers, especially the Coca Cola Company. Yet, this soft drink company still gains profits with a growing number of customers in over 200 countries (Taylor,2000). Over the past few years, a great many strong and innovative strategies has been launched so as to maintain its long term sustainability amongst the fast changing trend. Four important strategies of Coke Company will be analysed in either Western or Chinese markets. Differentiation strategy Differentiation has considerably assisted Coca Cola in achieving the competitive advantage in China. Coke has differentiated its products on the two dimensions. The first dimension is related to its products. Coca Cola diversifies its products on the basis of taste, brand and quality. In 2009, Coke Zero was launched and advertised as “zero calorie” to the global market in order to target a group of customers concerned about the excessive amount of sugar contained in classic coke. As a result, Coca-Cola commanded 17% of the U.S. soft drink market in 2009 while Pepsi held only 9.9% (Mok, 2010). Another differentiation strategy is related to images of the products. It is used by logo which establishes a brand name in the consumers’ mind. Since Coke zero is specifically marketed to men, the design of logo has to be masculinity unique. The design of coke zero has a black background which stands for men, original red Coca Cola logo with white color of word ZERO underneath
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