The Coca-Cola Company: Then and Now

The Coca-Cola Company has developed a marketing mix that has proven to be very successful throughout the years. The company has faced ever evolving challenges and has been able to adapt to past and current demands of social movements within customers in markets across the world as the leading provider of beverages with over 500 brands. Looking toward the future, The Coca-Cola Company continues to expand on their marketing strategy to ensure they provide products to consumers with lasting results. In the beginning, The Coca-Cola Company began with one product that was developed by a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia. The pharmacist, Dr. John Pemberton, developed a syrup mix with carbonated water resulting in what is today known as "Coca-Cola", (named by Frank Robinson, the bookkeeper). This was sold at Jacob's Pharmacy for five cents, having an average sale of nine beverages a day. Dr. Pemberton, sold the rights and died two years after developing the beverage in 1888. The product rights were bought by Asa G. Candler. Candler, a natural salesman, was the first person to begin marketing the beverage and took it beyond the Atlanta area into other states.

As it is stated in the case of Coca-Cola, it was a marketing machine ran by bureaucrats and tried to create an image of their brand more than to give to customers what they want. At that stage, Ivestor, who was a CEO of the company, was focusing more on the numbers and revenues than on what is really going inside of the company. He was described as insecure and arrogant and refused to listen to his own people, working for him. Instead of solving the real problems in the company, he was focusing on keeping profits on the same level. His lack of actions for solving the internal problem led to a lawsuit with his own company, which could be prevented if he has listened to people, who tried to warn him and turn him to actions. However, he ignored them. Ivestor tried to prevent dramatic outcomes of the lawsuit more than to solve the problem and prevent it in the future. His actions increased the number of plaintiffs from 4 to over than 2000 participated in a lawsuit. Ivestor refused to accept his fault, which led to his dismissal from the company. This is the first stage- unfreezing.

The next stage is a stage of providing the actual change actions. Here, the company has chosen a new CEO and President, Douglas Daft, who was an opposite of Ivestor. Daft was a delegator, who wanted to turn Coca-Cola to a most desired company by employees in the world. He also saw a company as a head of the class, when speaking about diversity of workforce and business. Daft was fast in his actions. He has put Ware on the position of Vice-President for Global Public Affairs, as he was concerned about diversity issues in the company as well. They applied Ware's suggestions about supporting the diversity from the top-executives and tying compensation increases to the achievement of diversity goals.