Coca-Cola Company Analysis: Ethical Issues, Stakeholders, and History

This report provides an analysis of the Coca-Cola Company, covering its historical background, core values, and recent acquisitions. It delves into the company's ethical issues, such as environmental concerns and past instances of discrimination, and how Coca-Cola has addressed them. The report also identifies and analyzes the company's key stakeholders, including customers, employees, and suppliers, detailing their roles and relationships through a stakeholders map. The analysis includes a customer-supplier relationship, employee-supplier relationship, and a customer-employee relationship, highlighting their importance for the company's success. The report also references several academic sources to support its findings.

1
Running head: COCA-COLA COMPANY
Coca-Cola Company
Institution
Student
Course
Date

2
COCA-COLA COMPANY
Company Analysis
Coca-Cola is a large company that produces, retails and markets non-alcoholic beverages across the world
and has been authorized to act as a single entity (FurtherAfrica, 2019). It was originally invented in 1886
by John Pemberton, a pharmacist from Columbus, Georgia and was used for medicinal purposes. It was
named by John’s shopkeeper, Frank M. Robinson after its major ingredients; coca leaves and kola nuts. In
1889, the brand was sold to an American businessman Asa G. Candler who officially launched it at
Atlanta and at this time its products were being sold in every union state. From 1960, Coca-Colahad been
making a lot of acquisitions of different firms that include; Minute Maid, a movie studio named Columbia
Pictures, Thums Up which is a cola brand in India, fruit, and smoothie making brand, Odwalla and in
2007, it acquired Fuze Beverage from Castanea and Lance Collins. Its recent acquisitions are Topo Chico
in Mexica, Moxie (August 2018) and Costa Coffee on 3rd January 2019. The company has a 30.8 percent
stake ownership in Coca-Cola Amatil company and a 6.93 percent ownership in the MADE group (The
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020).
Coca-Cola company’s customers purchase more than 1 billion of its products a day globally (Gertner &
Laura Rifkin, 2017). To maintain its position at the top nationally, achieve its missions and continue
thriving in the future, the company has set the following core values to guide them;
1. Quality- to satisfy the best quality of its products, Coca-Cola focuses on the health quality of the
products more than its profits. The company goes for natural sweeteners which are nutritive and
health advantageous, unlike artificial sweeteners that only focus on the sweet taste ignoring the
fact that they contain harmful chemicals to human bodies.
2. Excellence- Coca-Cola works hard to achieve excellence and exceed expectations. Its dynamic
nature has made it the top leading brand in the world. For instance, the company engages in

3
COCA-COLA COMPANY
outreach programs to improve people’s lives where it supports agendas such as education and
supporting young talents.
3. Respect- Most importantly, Coca-Cola respects its consumers. One aspect of this is the use of
natural sweeteners to bring out the sweet taste when they could easily use artificial ones. They not
only focus on their profits but also in making a positive difference by protecting people’s health.
4. Integrity- Coca-Cola not only focuses on its gains but also in promoting the communities that
have built it (Porter, Michael E.; Mark R. Kramer, 2018). The company supports community
development projects such as educating children, promoting infrastructural facilities and
developing talents among the youths. It further shows its integrity by the good quality Coke
products to its consumers that are naturally flavored to promote health.
An ethical culture is important in an organization as it improves the work environment and enhances
commitment to work. Coca-Cola has however had a crisis of an unethical culture over the past years
which they have been trying to amend (Knight, 2019). For instance, they have been accused of causing
pollution to the environment and causing water problems in India by using local groundwater. In response
to this, the company implemented the use of eco-friendly machines in their production processes. They
also made attempts to remain water neutral and this improved their efficiency in preserving the
environment. Another ethical issue faced by Coca-Cola was race discriminating against their African
employees where they paid them a lower amount from the American ones for the same amount of work
(Stephanie Mehta, 2019). They, however, corrected the case by paying them a sum of 193 million dollars
which ultimately fixed their reputation. Coca-Cola again sold contaminated products to Africa that had
been rejected in Belgium where they had caused illness on school children. This was yet another form of
race discrimination reported from the company which led to major losses as a lot of consumers withdrew
their stocks and Coca-Cola lost half of its shares (Statman, 470-477).

4
COCA-COLA COMPANY
Stakeholders Analysis
Stakeholders are all the people or firms that support the works of a particular company either directly or
indirectly. The following are Coca cola’s stakeholders and their stakes;
1. Customers- they are the primary stakeholders of the company as they have a great influence on it.
They have a role to evaluate the quality of the items, the services, and prices of these products in
exchange for their remittance. Their needs and expectations have to be met in the products
offered to them. Besides, Coca-Cola has to regularly give preferential treatments to its consumers
such as discount offers to maintain a good relationship with them (Bijmolt, Tammo H. A.; Peter
C. Verhoef, 2017).
2. Employees- they help the company is running its operations allowing employers to assess or
evaluate their work. Employees are part of the consumers as they too buy the company’s
products. They also have a role in the decision-making processes of the company and return,
employees, are entitled to safe and healthy work environments and opportunities for training,
personal and organizational growth.
3. Suppliers- Coca-Cola has many suppliers with the role of bringing in raw materials to the
company. They are expected to supply ingredients and other raw materials in their right quantities
and of high quality. They have a role to advise the company on better raw materials in the market
and charge reasonable prices for them. In return, Coca-Cola has to offer perfect payment ways,
flexible credit systems and a good working environment for them

5
COCA-COLA COMPANY
Stakeholders map
Customers Employees Suppliers
Coca-Cola
stakeholders;
Customers
Employees
Suppliers

6
COCA-COLA COMPANY
There is a customer-supplier relationship that has to be maintained positive. Customers expect a constant
supply of good quality products at the time they order as well as flexible credit systems, while suppliers
expect loyalty from their customers and timely payments.
There is an employee-supplier relationship since both of them work to satisfy their customer's needs in
terms of the quality of the products and services they offer.
The customer-employee relationship exists because employees are always working to meet the
customer’s expectations. They directly influence the relationship by ways in which they handle
customer’s complaints and their quality of service.
References

7
COCA-COLA COMPANY
Bijmolt, Tammo H. A. Peter C. Verhoef. (2017). Loyalty Programs: Current Insights, Research
Challenges, and Emerging Trends. Retrieved July 14, 2017, from Handbook of Marketing
Decision Models: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-56941-3_5
FurtherAfrica. (2019). FURTHER AFRICA. Retrieved October 28, 2019, from Coca Cola, makes major
acquisition in Kenya: https://furtherafrica.com/2019/10/28/coca-cola-makes-major-acquisition-in-
kenya/
Gertner, D., & Laura Rifkin. (2017). Coca
‐Cola and the Fight against the Global Obesity Epidemic.
Retrieved January 6, 2017, from Wifey Online Library:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/tie.21888
Knight, G. C. (2019). aligning scripts and actors: strengthening crisis response capabilities by minimizing
process deviation. Crisis management, 101 pages.
Porter, Michael E.; Mark R. Kramer. (2018). Creating Shared Value. Retrieved March 08, 2018, from
Springer Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-024-1144-7_16
Statman, M. (470-477). Financial Advertising in the Second Generation of Behavioral Finance. Journal of
Behavioral Finance, 470-477.
Stephanie Mehta. (2019). Despite spending billions, companies can’t buy diversity. Retrieved November
22, 2019, from Democracy, Dies in Darkness: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/despite-
spending-billions-companies-cant-buy-diversity/2019/11/21/d8907b92-fb1a-11e9-ac8c-
8eced29ca6ef_story.html
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2020). ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. Retrieved March 8,
2020, from The Coca-ColaCompany: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Asa-Griggs-Candler

8
COCA-COLA COMPANY