Coca Cola Case Analysis

Coca-Cola Case Analysis

Peter Portera

Columbia Southern University

Coca-Cola Case Analysis  

The Coca-Cola Company has been a favorite in America and around the world for over 100 years.  The drink and the name brand have stood the test of time.  Innovation, diversity, and strong leadership are its calling card.  The drink packaging and creative marketing makes Coca-Cola an industry leader in sales and brand.  Coca-Cola has survived a great depression, world-war and economic downturns and remained the number one brand, but can it fend off obesity, health conscious consumers or the FDA?  When developing a long term strategy for success, the leadership has its work cut out for them when analyzing opportunities and threats of the company.  They must be creative when combating their competitors and offer consumers healthy alternatives to this iconic soda.  

To continue to be a favorite and to consistently generate revenue in the billions of dollars, Coca-Cola must monitor its external environment and continue to be innovative in the strategy formulation.  Opportunities need to be capitalized on, as well as having a plan to mitigate threats.  A constant threat to any company is its competitors.  Coca-Cola must know what their competitors are doing and have a strategy to offset them.  The Coca-Cola Company is, by its own account, the largest beverage company in the world.  It owns or licenses more than 500 nonalcoholic beverage brands (Coca-Cola, 2015).  The top four of five nonalcoholic sparkling beverages are owned by Coca-Cola: Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, and Sprite (Coca-Cola, 2015).  John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, invented Coca-Cola in 1886 as a curiosity.  Coca-Cola started independent bottling company in 1899 and continues this today (About, n.d.).  The Coca-Cola (2015) annual report sums up the company this way:

        We make our branded beverage products available to consumers in more than 200 countries through our network of Company-owned or -controlled bottling and distribution operations as well as independent bottling partners, distributors, wholesalers and retailers — the world’s largest beverage distribution system. (p.30).

Not only did the company show innovation with their bottling strategy (selling of the bottling rights and keeping the rights to the Coca-Cola syrup), but marketing was innovative too; from catchy phrases like “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke”, to commercials featuring “Mean Joe Greene” (About, n.d.).  Coca-Cola started with sales of nine servings a day to 1.9 billion servings globally today (About, n.d.).

There are many opportunities and threats for Coca-Cola in their external environment.  Many of these opportunities and threats are out of the company’s direct control.  However, risk associated with these can and should be minimized.  Some opportunities can help thwart a threat.  For instance, one threat Coca-Cola faces is the transition of families to more health conscious lifestyle, which is a threat to current and future sales.  The company’s latest research shows health concerns are marketer’s major theme (Coca-Cola Enterprises, 2015).  A marketing focus needs to change because the health conscious consumer is looking for low calorie to no calorie nonalcoholic beverages.  Coca-Cola counters this threat with several products like “glaceau vitamin water that is a nutrient-enhanced water beverage, which hydrates the body and contains no sodium or artificial ingredients” and “sells Sprite brand with stevia, a naturally derived low calorie sweetener” (Coca-Cola Enterprises, 2015, p.6).  Another threat to Coca-Cola’s profitability is water scarcity.  Just about all Coca-Cola products contain water and with rapid growth in population and pollution to freshwater sources, water is becoming scarcer in every country (Coca-Cola Enterprises, 2015).  The chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., Muhtar Kent, (as cited in Bremmer, 2013) is concerned and shared what kept him up at night,