Analyzing Coca Cola's Business Strategy and Planning

Introduction

Business planning is integral part of every firm and company that like to exceed in the growth and to achieve its targets in the future. Under the subject of business strategy we help to get all the information and practice on how this all works and how to resolve the issues when a company does not work well with its day to day activities and in the achievement of its goals. So business strategies is an efficient way to achieve all this like as according to Arnold Anderson that a company is more likely to lose its customer with having no strategic planning.

Also it helps to expand the business with more likely to use the resources more effectively (2011). In the coming paragraphs I will evaluate the business strategies for COCA Cola Company working as a consultant in UK headquarters. Within the UK market the company has observed a range of down fall in its sales for fizzy drinks like coca cola, diet coke and coke zero brand products.

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Company background

The multinational American beverages and food manufacturing company COCA cola was founded in 1892 by ASA griggs, actually formulated by john in 1886, the company manufactures to over 200 countries and operate under 500 brands. The company has a turnover of $ 48.21 billion each year. The UK headquarter is in Hammersmith London.

According to Linda Alchin the mission statement of Coca Cola Company is “to refresh the world to inspire moments of optimism and happiness and create value for making difference” (2009). The mission statement of an organisation shows what the company is going to do in the future and how they are going to do it.

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(Rizwan, 2012).

As the vision statement helps the firm to provide a path on which it can lead to achieve the mission, the vision statement of Coca Cola Company is divided five different parts known as the six P’s these are people; to provide people the best place to work where they can prove their talent, portfolio; to give people the quality food and beverages in accordance to their needs, partners; to provide an excellent network for the stakeholders, planet; building a clean and sustainable environment as a responsible citizen, Profit; being responsible and taking care of maximizing profits for shareholders, productivity; productive and fast moving organisation. After knowing the mission and vision statement of the company it’s important to know what are the objectives of the company.

The main objectives and goals of Coca Cola Company is to be globally known for its business globally ethically and responsibly with a goal to maintain and accelerate the business for future growth. The core competencies of the coca cola company are the strong network with its bottlers and the brand name which gives the company a competitive advantage of bargaining power and leverage.

The issues involved in strategic planning

Strategic planning involves addressing several critical issues, including a lack of ownership, ineffective communication, misalignment, and sluggish adoption. Before devising solutions, it's essential to delve into the root causes of these planning challenges.

According to Mike Estereel the beverages companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi and Dr Pepper Snapple group, that the second half of the last year the company’s products sales started to decline in the US market, stever power who is a beverage analysts showed that the main reason behind this is the alluring prices in the year 2011 which increased more in the late 2012, also the articles describes that it was affecting the consumer health very badly resulting in diseases like diabetes and obesity. The sales growth fell down by 0.6% in 2012, as people are turning into the substitutes, like energy drinks and coffee and water, and thus the company is focusing more on providing a more selective range of water and energy drinks (2013).

In another article by Stephenie Strom told that the company sales went up in the beginning of 2013 but it shares fell down, the sales were around $ 1.87 billion dollars with a rise 4% revenue as comparison to the last year, but the shares for the company market fell down by 2.7 percent, “within the Europe market the sales were down more than the expected rate” said by jack russo a stock analyst. (2013). Now as we studied earlier that the company wants to become a worldwide brand of beverages and accelerate in the future, these are some of the recent strategic problems the company is facing this year. 1.3- Explain different planning techniques.

The Coca Cola company's vision and mission for the year 2020 is to stay ahead in the future by following new trends and forces that will affect the business and prepare for the outcome. Now in order to achieve these plans there are set of techniques used in each business, some of these are:

  • BCG – growth share matrix: this matrix was developed by boston consulting group in 1960’s, this framework makes the companies to give priority and the resources distributed among the business. The matrix consist categories named as cash cow, star, dog and question mark. (Unknown, 2009). Cash cow represent the companies with high market share similarly like the stars but it also present companies with high growth prospects, while on the other hand the dog shows low on both prospects, and the question mark shows high growth but low market share.
  • Directional policies matrices: in such framework the company is able to compare its performance and take decisions of producing products to the market.
  • SPACE & PIMS matrices: to stay competitive in the market the company utilizes this matrix for the formulations of strategies for the organisation. It stands for the strategic position and action evaluation matrix. While as the PIMS strategy stands profit impact of marketing strategy, in which the company is able to analyze the relationship between the key strategic decisions and its results.

Organisational audit

The organisational audit comprise of several tools that enables individuals to know more about the culture and the recent situation of the organisation. There are a number of tools used for auditing organisation one of which is scoping out the organisation which comprise of the following; Culture: Coca cola Culture is work as a team of one team, one company with a one goal to achieve to bring people closer, with a diverse environment. (Journey, 2011). Industry segments: coca cola uses three kinds of segments for its company, geographic, demographic and psychographic segmentation, the company targets all age group people mostly families.

Now to analyze what are the threats and opportunities that Coca cola will have in the market we will make the SWOT analysis for the company:

  • Strengths: customer loyalty, suppliers bargaining power, extensive distribution channel, power advertising and marketing, in terms of value coca cola is the world’s best brand and the company CSR strategies.
  • Weaknesses: the main focus of the company is on carbonated and fizzy drinks, high level of debts, brand with failure and insignificant amount of value, bad brand reputation.
  • Opportunities: growth in the bottled water, demand for dietary and low fat beverages and foods and acquisitions growth possibilities.
  • Threats: PepsiCo as a competitor, increasing demand change of consumer, saturated carbonated drinks market, gross and net profit decrease.

Environmental audit

There are certain external and internal forces that impact the organisational activities; environment is one of those forces. For coca cola maintaining a good environment for its consumers and citizen is very important. As it is one of the company’s vision statement to contribute to build a safe and natural environment. As we know the main aim of the environmental auditing is to analyze the management’s activities towards the environment.

PEST analysis:

  • Political: as we know coca cola operates its business all around the world, so when entering a country for the distribution of the products they maintain the specific policies of each country, for example; like in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, they mention the word halal stamp on each of the products shipping to such countries.
  • Economic: as a business its responsibility of the organisation to maintain a business that is effective for the economy as well and thus Coca Cola has been able to achieve this challenge. In the year 2006 and onwards after the recession the company started innovative projects on a low cost basis.
  • Social: health consciousness have more increased in this century than ever before and for such reasons coca cola demand for the fizzy and carbonated drinks have decreased thus to increase its value the company diversify its products into fruit juices and low carbs drinks.
  • Technological: the coca cola company have adapted various advancements in its technologies that have been both effective for the company, consumers and environment, like plastic bottles which can be recycled as its easy and safe to use, also increase the production for the company. Within Britain the company has six factories all using modern equipment.

Significance of stakeholder’s analysis

Stakeholders are considered of major importance in coca cola Company, as these are the forces that impact the company operations both internally and externally. The main function of the stakeholder’s analysis is that it provides the level and range of impact the company and the stakeholders have on each other. The main stakeholders of Coca Cola Company are; civil society, government, customers, investors, employees and suppliers. According to the coca cola company the story inside each bottle of their drink is written by consumers, customers, bottlers and non profit organisations and all those who have interest in our business. For further clarification and expansion in the stakeholders programme from the last two years the company is working with national government for the implementation of sports and fitness programme.

The coca cola company helps to create value for its customers; also the company shows great response towards the social SRI community. While developing its marketing strategies for companies like coca cola it’s important to communicate and thus its company’s responsibility to be honest and fair. In Coca Cola Company the employees are considered as a great asset for the company and for such reason the company adopts such kind of environment which motivates employees.

Possible alternative strategies

Realising the current situation of the organisation, for Coca Cola Company to accelerate on the path of growth there are various strategies to adopt some which are described below:

  • Pricing: pricing the products properly may lead to the company increase in the sales revenues. For a firm it is important to analyze that the price should be fair, it should cover the cost and also keep a comparison with the competitors. (Devra, 2012)
  • Advertising: another major kind of strategy used in the marketing of the products, which enables the company to communicate its products with the consumers. With the help of an effective advertisement strategy the company is able to grow sales revenues and better promote its products features in the market. (Felicia, 2011). The revent advertisements like style caster, zamzie video that got viral and the polar bear add.
  • Customer relationship management (CRM): with the help of the CRM the company is able to know more about customer, as doing so will make the company to differentiate its customers according to their needs.
  • STP Segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy: one of the most major strategies in marketing products, coca cola company targets almost all age of consumer market, also coke segmentation strategy is based on the demand of customers. (Raja et al, 2010).

Appropriate future strategy

As we know that COCA cola company within the UK market faced a downfall in fizzy drinks as people are becoming more health conscious and likes to drink more other forms of water, now for COCA cola company to increase its value of drinking water in the near future it is important to adopt certain strategies, as a consultant I would suggest the MCkinsey growth pyramid.

For the attainment of the future growth MCkinsey growth strategy is an effective approach, according to this strategy there are four basic parameters these are: operational skills, growth skills, privileged assets and special relationship. As the operational goals of coca cola is to find new customers, attain new ones and to bring a discounted accounts, now in order to achieve all this the company can use operational skills as said in the mckinsey strategy which will attain higher profits and future growth. (M. Dilawar, 2010). Another step is recognizing the privileged assets of the organisation with coca cola the privileged assets are its brand, patent and distribution network.

Within the management the growth skills are required to lead growth with the help of new product development, expanding into new region and increasing acquisitions. Increasing level of relationship with the government and social authorities help to easily attain the goals. 4.1- compare the roles and responsibilities for strategy implementation. After evaluating the strategies it’s important to analyse it with the company team members and staff for the implementation of the strategy. As the strategic goal of Coca cola company is to be globally known for its products and services and attain future growth, as a consultant manager the team I appoint are:

Marketing manager: Within the team the marketing manager is responsible for the pricing, positioning, advertising and STP strategies to achieve the substantial or limited growth. In the UK the coca cola company marketing director is shelly Macintyre.

Planning technician: The main responsibility of a planning technician is to gather data and convert it into information while planning, as Coca Cola Company is using techniques like BCG matrix, directional policies matrices, SPACE and PIMS strategy which will be evaluated by the technician.

Audit manager: The audit manager is external and internal the internal is responsible for comparing the audits with the annual audits plan, the person responsible for environmental audit is the environmental auditor manager whose main responsibilities is to coordinate the management activities with an effect on the environment.

Operational managers: Richard Davieas is the operational manager at the Coca cola London Headquarters, and is responsible for the data entry, managing organisation HR, payroll and helping in creating budget.

Resource requirements to implement a new strategy

For the implementation of the plan and strategies there a number of resources required to full fill the needs and the requirements. These resources can be physical, financial, and human and time resource. In the financial resources the company would be able recover all the costs for the redevelopment of the products, as coca cola aim is to increase the production for the non – fizzy drinks and water. The financial resources can be both internal external and internal, the main sources for the company would be; bank, shareholders, company capital and investors.

As long as the human resources is concerned the company employees highly skilled and knowledgeable employees, in 2009 the company was awarded for the best place to work. The company provides excellent employees development with training and rewards. For the physical resources the company is covering around 200 countries and manufacturing 400 brands of products.

Targets and timescales

The main target and goal of the coca cola company is to: become the number one brand in food and beverages by the year 2020; to increase the sales revenue up to 10% for the non fizzy drinks as in accordance to the demand; to create value for the fizzy drinks.

Starting from the year 2014, the company will start its employment within the month of April and hopes to end the process by the end of May, as the company needs more staff and marketing managers. By the end of September the company plans to start focusing on increasing the sales which will after the release of the financial statement for the year 2013. For the customer satisfaction the operational managers will employ to collect information regarding each customer, which would be possible through the help of the distributors, which then will review its process by the end of March 2015.

Conclusion

Coca cola for being the one of the world’s largest beverages company, still as business has to go through all the ups and downs and to maintain its ever growing market it has to adopt certain strategies and for such reason through the above paragraphs we have learned how the company follows different techniques and tools to sustain its brand in the market. We also were able to learn how to manage monitor and use certain skills and techniques like auditing, planning techniques. We also analyze the importance of environment and stakeholders towards the organisation and its management activities.

Updated: Jan 30, 2024
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Analyzing Coca Cola's Business Strategy and Planning. (2016, Apr 16). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/business-strategy-essay

Analyzing Coca Cola's Business Strategy and Planning essay
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