Marketing Strategies: Modernist vs. Symbolic-Interpretivist Approaches

As far as marketing is concerned, Coca Cola ensures that the consumers buy their brands as much as possible. They market their brands trough advertisements and other forms of communication to the consumers. Taking Coca Cola UK as our example, it is realized that the brand of Coca Cola soft drinks are only home consummated and therefore by 2001 Coca Cola UK gave out its marketing objectives to the shareholders.

The objectives read in part; since the soft drinks were perceived to be only consumed at home and the fact that most people would not readily buy Coca Cola soft drinks while out of home, the company set out to increase ‘impulse buy’ by 15% in the next 12 months.

The question that we need to analyze here is the fact that people do not buy soft drinks when out using the two perspectives of organizational theory. How can the knowledge of the lack of outside impulse buy be ascertained?

Well, according to the modernists, knowledge is anything that can be accessed by use of the five senses.

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How can the fact that people prefer not to buy the Coca Cola soft drinks while outside their homes be accessed by the five senses and thus qualify to be knowledge which can consequently to make decisions? Since modernists mostly emphasize objectivity and discourage subjectivity in research, there is no need to interview individuals because this will be more of subjective than objective.

If a modernist was to conduct an investigation to ascertain the truth of the claim given above, then he/she would prefer to go to restaurants and do a survey of how many people buy the soft drinks as compared to the total number of people in the restaurant.

Then other restaurants will be are sampled and the results will be reached. The date used in the investigation is what can be seen and measured and thus satisfies the modernism ideals of research.

After the results have been analyzed, then a generalization can be made for example more than 80% of UK citizens will prefer not to buy Coca Cola while outside their homes. However, if symbolic-interpretivists were to carry a similar survey they would prefer to interview individuals wanting to know whether or not individuals will buy Coca Cola soft drinks when out. This is because they emphasize subjectivity; there has to be people to tell us that they either prefer or prefer not to buy Coca Cola softy drinks while out of their homes.

To achieve the marketing objective of increasing impulse buys of Coca Cola soft drinks by the UK citizens by 15% in 12 months. To achieve this objective the modernists will prefer to use objective marketing methods which can easily be measurable. One of the approaches likely to be taken is to increase the corporate image of coca cola especially in UK besides marrying the image with the brand promise. One of the reasons why such drinks are not taken is because of the increment of incidences of obesity which more than one occasions has been linked to the sugary Coca Cola drinks besides other reasons.

The modernist will therefore move on to prove the fact that the sugar content is not any more than the other popular soft drinks and the fact that the soft drinks cause obesity is a lie. After proving this and communicating in the most appropriate way to the clients, the modernists will then wait and measure the impact of the move. They will also move to address each of the possible causes of limited impulse buys by approaching with an objective solution e. g. re-branding in an event that people do not want to be seen taking the sugary Coca Cola soft drinks in public or outside their homes (Adcock et al, 2001).