Marketing Management Report: Strategic Actions for Coca-Cola Bottling

This report provides an analysis of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company's strategic marketing management, focusing on the strategic actions the company has taken to improve its market share and competitive profile. It identifies key issues facing the company, including competition and sustainability, and outlines strategies such as market development, market segmentation, brand establishment, enhancing financial and process efficiency, investing in core competencies, and conducting research. The report emphasizes the importance of adapting to the competitive environment through innovation in bottle design, cost reduction, and leveraging technology to improve business processes. Ultimately, the report concludes that these strategic actions are crucial for Coca-Cola Bottling Company to maintain profitability and increase market share.

MARKETING
MANAGEMENT

1
Contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................1
Product category and sector.......................................................................................................1
Strategic actions.........................................................................................................................1
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................3

2
INTRODUCTION
Today’s competitive environment has forced companies to manage their business operations
appropriately so as to ensure that they have a competitive edge over the rivals. The Coca-
Cola bottling Company is one of the biggest firms in the industry (Coca Cola United, 2019).
Since Coca cola sells many kinds of non-alcoholic beverages hence they require high quality
bottles as well so as to provide products in an appropriate manner. Plastic, glass and
aluminium cans are manufactured by the companies in which drinks are being sold. There are
many competitors in the industry and they are capable of taking the market share from Coca
cola and with new kinds of investments being done in the bottling business, it has become
essential for the company to examine their business model so as to gain competitive
advantage. This paper will analyse different aspects of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company and
some strategic decisions taken by the firm to improve their market share and profile in the
next three years.
Product category and sector
Coca-cola deals in the business of beverages hence its product category includes beverages
and bottling of those beverages. Coca cola bottling company deals in the business of
manufacturing of bottle that is made of aluminium, glass and plastics. This company is facing
different sustainability issues because of these bottles. This makes their bottling product a
difficult business to deal with. This comes in the consumer goods products as their ultimate
goal is to serve the coca-cola products in the market (Adeyemi and Salami, 2010). This sector
is one of those sectors which is facing higher amount of competition. This has forced the
Coca cola bottling company to improve the ways in which they deal with this high
competition.
Strategic actions
Coca Cola Company has made many types of strategies over the years and these strategies
have helped them in becoming the leader in the industry. The bottling company is facing two
major issue first competition and second sustainability (Balogun, et al. 2012). In such an
environment, it is crucial for the organisation to plan their strategies and take actions that will
improve the firm’s position in the market. For the next three years, coca cola bottling
company’s strategic actions are provided below:

3
 Market development: In order to tackle with the competition that produced in the
market, this company is highly focused towards developing market. Both in USA and
at International levels, they are producing products that can give them competitive
advantage over the rivals. This includes reaching people in the rural areas and among
the people that cannot be reached easily. They have focused towards both developed
and developing markets.
 Market segmentation: For the next three years, this company will have to develop
market segment that will help them in gaining higher positions in the market. This
will ensure that profits remains on the higher side. In which market which kind of
bottling are more successful is an important decision that Coca Cola has to make in
the next three years. By bottling in an appropriate manner, this company is focused
towards increasing its sales volume rather than increasing its profits. This will help
them in improving their consumer domains and hence making a strong foundation for
their business in future (Karnani, 2014). Type of bottling always plays a crucial role
in the pricing as the overall cost will change due to bottling. In order to target
economically weaker section in the society, they are aiming to produce products at
economical rates. In developing countries they are focusing on making balance
between pricing and volume sold while in the developed nations, their major focus is
on increasing the profits by offering small and premium packages in the bottles of
aluminium and glass. They aim to target people and hence increasing organic revenue.
 Brand establishment and customer relationship: Another important strategic action
that this company has made for itself is Brand establishment. It is essential for
enlarging firm’s portfolio. Customer always prefers branded products over the others
and hence it is important for an organisation to invest in developing brands. This can
be done by modernising and improving the advertisements. For this they have planned
to invest more than 300$ Million. This has been done for creating the impact on the
minds of people and hence making coca cola as a part of people’s life. They are also
improving their bottles that connect with the people. Marketing campaign is also run
through the bottling of the company. In different markets they sell the products with
some other tag lines and it gets mentioned on the coca cola bottles (Moses and Vest,
2010). This company needs to develop new slogans that connect with the people at
the local regions. While increasing the customer relationship, they are mentioning
their qualities at its bottles such as Zero caffeine or lower numbers of calories.

4
 Enhancing financial efficiency: It is essential for any organisation to ensure that they
have financial efficiency in the way they invest. Increasing the ROI in the bottling
industry can be difficult but it essential in the competitive environment that Coca-
Cola is facing. Their annual budget is revised from Zero and hence they have
increased the flexibility by implementing the solutions like ‘Zero Based work’. They
make investments and calculate the financial performance while simply not carrying
the levels in the last years. They are also reducing the cost that they had to invest on
the sustainability. By improving the quality of bottles, waste reduction is reduced
considerably. This has increased their chances related to managing the cost involved
in different processes. More than 700-800 millions are to be invested by the country
for improving the productivity. This is done by business process improvement, brand
making and giving decent dividends to shareholders. They are adopting strategies
such as lean production and quality management to ensure that their competiveness in
the market (Isdell and Beasley, 2011).
 Enhancing process efficiency: Any firm can be understood as the fully efficient when
it’s processing time is reduced to lowest of levels without having effect on the quality.
When demand is suddenly enhanced, the role of process time becomes significant.
Ineffective pre-planning along with process planning will increase the higher demands
due to disruption in supply. Since the consumer demands are highly volatile hence
company need to continuously innovate, the bottle design in terms of both quality and
quantity. By reshaping the business process and product design, company will be able
to remove the functional management layer (Ramirez, Rincon and Parada, 2014).
They are planning to invest higher amount of money on technological advancements
that are capable of improving the business process. At the same time, their focus is
also on making advancements in the smarter technologies. A long term approach to
system advancements needs to be adopted by the company that will help in giving
them edge in the market. This will also help in making better relation with the
stakeholders.
 Investing on core competencies and business model: For any company, it is essential
that they develop their core competencies and improve their business model in such a
manner that maximum profits can be achieved from their business. Since they have a
high quality products hence they need to focus on two things, first the once that are
not dangerous for the environment and second those bottles that are cheaper and are
easily usable. This will add value to the variety of customers as the design of bottles

5
have role in generating higher profits (Mayureshnikam and Patil 2015). They are
investing in their primary competency of having an ability to manage larger system of
independent bottling partners as well as also acquire a number of bottlers under its
own brand name. Their major aim is to enhance the bottling partner’s performance by
enhancing the productivity as well as investing on optimising their manufacturing.
Distribution system and finally refranchising the bottling territories independence will
help the company in increasing its sales. In North America firm owns bottling
territories that are independent. They are aiming to add new bottling partners in North
America, Western Europe as well as Southern and East Africa, China and Indonesia
(Banutu-Gomez, 2012). This company is reducing the company owned bottlers by
around 3% from around 18% of the global volume.
 Research: Due to the sustainability issues that company is facing in different markets
it has become essential for the Coca-cola Company to invest in the research. This
research will help the company in terms of improving the quality of bottles and the
way in which it is served to the employees (Ware, 2014). For optimisation of supply
chain and inventory such as researches are highly essential. This will also help the
firm in reducing their expenses on the waste.
Conclusion
From the above based report Coca Cola Bottling Company has invested a lot of money on
improving the design and quality of bottles. They are producing bottles of the materials such
as glass, aluminium and plastics. Strategic actions such as market development, market
segmentation, research, investing on core competencies and business model, enhancing
process efficiency, enhancing financial efficiency, brand establishment and customer
relationship are very helpful for the organisation. This will help the firm in gaining more
profits and increasing the market share of the company.

6
REFERENCES
Adeyemi, S.L. and Salami, A.O., 2010. Inventory management: A tool of optimizing
resources in a manufacturing industry a case study of Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Ilorin
plant. Journal of social Sciences, 23(2), pp.135-142.
Balogun, O.S., Jolayemi, E.T., Akingbade, T.J. and Muazu, H.G., 2012. Use of linear
programming for optimal production in a production line in Coca–Cola bottling company,
Ilorin. International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications, 2(5), pp.2004-2007.
Banutu-Gomez, M.B., 2012. Coca-Cola: International business strategy for globalization. The
Business & Management Review, 3(1), p.155.
Coca Cola United, 2019. Our Business. [Online] Available at:
https://cocacolaunited.com/our-company/our-business/. [Accessed on 21st March 2019]
Isdell, N. and Beasley, D., 2011. Inside Coca-Cola: a CEO's life story of building the world's
most popular brand. St. Martin's Press.
Karnani, A., 2014. Corporate social responsibility does not avert the tragedy of the commons.
Case study: Coca-Cola India. Economics, Management and Financial Markets, 9(3), p.11.
Mayureshnikam, and Patil, V.V., 2015. Marketing Strategy Of Coca Cola. [Online] Available
at: http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Conf.ADMIFMS1808-2018/Volume-
1/12.%2077-85.pdf. [Accessed on 21st March 2019]
Moses, C.T. and Vest, D., 2010. Coca-cola and PepsiCo in South Africa: A landmark case in
corporate social responsibility, ethical dilemmas, and the challenges of international
business. Journal of African Business, 11(2), pp.235-251.
Ramirez, M.M.G., Rincon, J.C.V. and Parada, J.F.L., 2014, February. Liquid level control of
Coca-Cola bottles using an automated system. In 2014 International Conference on
Electronics, Communications and Computers (CONIELECOMP) (pp. 148-154). IEEE.
Ware, E.O., 2014. Investigate the Benefit Practice of Total Quality Management as
Competitive Advantage in Corporate Institution: A Case Study of Cocoa-Cola Bottling
Company Ghana Ltd. Research Journal of Finance and Accounting, 5(23), pp.97-99.