Management of Coca - Cola Water Resources Constraints

Management of Coca - Cola water resources constraints

Zeyang Du

Dr. Edward Goold

MGT 430

11/16/2016

Abstract

This paper is an international business strategy for the Coca-Cola Company. The Company can make use of the suggestions in this study to end the water constraint challenge that has been facing the company for almost a decade. The first section of the paper provides a quick overview of Coca-Cola Company in the international business environment. Coca-Cola Company started as a private entity, and it has grown to a multinational enterprise with a market dominance of over 1.6 billion clients on a daily basis. The second part of the paper explicitly focuses on the water shortage problem for the company in China and India. Bottling plants were closed in the two countries over claims by the locals that the corporation was completely draining the scarce water resource. In both cases, the area locals were entirely dependent on the affected water sources for their livelihood. In the third part, the paper describes mitigating strategies of solving water risk issues in various regions of the world with much emphasis on what should be done by the Coca-Cola Company.  Finally, the paper summarizes its contents and recommends the need for further research.

Managing Resource Constraints

Introduction

Coca-Cola Company is one of the largest multinational enterprises that started out as a small private business owned by a single person. Over the past ten decades, it has grown to be a multinational company that operates evenly in different parts of the world. Dr. John Pemberton was the first director of the enterprise, and today it is run by Ahmet Muhtar Kent, a Turkish-American with a vast experience in the management field. This company deals with the soft drinks. They produce and market their non-alcoholic drinks to the world’s consumers. After its inception by Dr. John in 1886, it is important to mention that Asa Candler purchased the brand and the production process in 1889 (Staggenborg, 2016). And since then, they have provided some other goods that they sell to their clients using other brand names. Currently, Coca-Cola Company owns over five hundred brands that they market in approximately two hundred countries. According to Chattopadhyay & Franke (2006), the company serves over 1.6 billion people with their products every day.

Chattopadhyay & Franke (2006), indicate that the company attained to be in the stock-company status by 1894. That saw the company change its identity to Pemberton Chemical Company. After some time, the name was again altered to the Pemberton Medicine Company to accommodate the new partnership that had been signed with regards to the company’s ownership. Today, the Coca-Cola Company has engaged in mergers and acquisitions that have significantly contributed to its growth. However, the most recent move to acquire Huiyuan Juice group failed as a result of the nationalistic culture in China. According to the president of Coca-Cola Company, China is one of the main expanding markets for the company (Chattopadhyay, 2006). In fact, the right sales in China and India have placed the company as one of the multinational enterprises with the best sales growth globally. Muhtar Kent also contends that China is the fourth largest market regarding revenue and it is their projection that it might outweigh Brazil as one of their largest markets. Having established itself in China with an initial capital of 1.25 billion dollars, the company now has over 30 bottling plants and well-established infrastructure (Chattopadhyay, 2006).