Marketing Essentials Report: Coca-Cola Marketing Strategy Analysis

This report delves into the core aspects of marketing through a comprehensive analysis of Coca-Cola's strategies. It begins by outlining the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function, emphasizing its interactions with top management, coordination of business activities, identification of market potentials, product evaluation, and the launch of new products. The report then examines how these roles and responsibilities are affected by and impact the marketing environment, discussing both positive and negative impacts. Furthermore, it explores the interrelationship between marketing and other organizational functions such as finance, human resources, and production, highlighting how collaboration is essential for achieving business objectives. The report then moves on to the marketing mix, evaluating various tactics applied by the organization, and concludes with the creation and evaluation of a basic marketing plan. This report provides a detailed overview of the marketing process and its practical application within a real-world business context.

Marketing Essentials

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function....................................1
M1 Analyse the roles and responsibilities of marketing in context of the marketing
environment.................................................................................................................................4
P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational Context..............5
M2 Analyses the interrelationship between marketing and other functional units.....................7
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................8
P3 Marketing mix that helps to achieve business objective........................................................8
M3 Evaluation of different tactics that is applied by organisation...........................................11
TASK 3..........................................................................................................................................12
P4 Marketing plan for the new product.....................................................................................12
M4 Detailed marketing plan for the organisation.....................................................................16
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................16
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................17

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the process of maintaining relationship with customers and identification of
their needs and desires and channelising all its effort towards fulfilment of need to attain
customer satisfaction. Marketing is essential to all type of business as it allows to communicate
with target customers effectively. Marketing is essential for promoting product in the target
market through advertisement, public selling etc. The study of marketing area shows how
company deliver satisfaction to consumer and manage their brand and increase profitability. The
company chosen for this report is Coca-cola who produces concentrate, and sold to licensed
Coca-cola bottlers around the world. The company was established by John Sith Pemberton in
late 19th century. The bottlers holding exclusive territory contract with company produce the
good in cans or bottles as finished good by combining concentrate with filtered water and
sweeteners. This report covers the key roles and responsibilities of marketing function and its
inter-relation with company and the significance of this relation for benefit of company. This
also covers comparison of ways in which organisation apply marketing mix to the marketing
planning process to achieve business objective. Evaluation of tactics applied to organisation to
achieve business objective and designing a strategic plan that applies to achieve marketing
objectives. This also covers producing and evaluating of a basic marketing plan and providing
coherent evidenced based on marketing plan.
TASK 1
P1 Explain the key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function
Marketing is the process of building relationship with customer and satisfying their need.
It is an important activity of management as it helps management in maintaining relationship
with outsiders and scan the external environment for the benefit of organisation. The activities of
marketing is related with communicating, delivering, exchanging offerings which adds value to
customers, clients, partner and society. The Marketing is concerned with the identifying the
needs of consumer and channelising all effort in fulfilling the needs. It also seek interest of the
shareholders through maintaining relationships with customers and obtaining competitive
advantage. There are several roles and responsibilities of marketing function which are used by
Coca-Cola are defined as-
Roles of marketing function-
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 Work with Top management- The marketing mainly focus on coordinating with top
management. It assist the top management in formation of marketing plan and policies to
reduce the errors in planning. It helps management of Coca-cola is coordinating with
outsiders such as client, customers, supplier etc.
 Supervise and coordinate business activities- The marketing has to build effective
coordination with the other activities of business which are purchase, sale, packaging,
storage, transportation, advertisement etc. Coca-cola coordinates the activities effectively
which result in proper utilisation of resources which reduce cost and increase
profitability.
 Identify potential market- The marketing has to identify new potentials market and also
required to maintain the relationship with existing market of the organisation and their
products. After identification of new potentials market, the strategies are formulated to
create and increase demand for the goods and services provided by Coca-cola.
 Evaluate the product- The needs and demand of consumer changes time to time due to
technological era. To cope up with changing demand, the marketing of Coca-cola has to
study all the changes and analyse the product periodically to assure that the modification
and alteration in the quality of product is properly applied. These changes in product will
result in meeting changing the demands of consumers and enhancing relation with
consumer.
 Launch new product or service- The marketing has to analyse the needs of the market
and according to the requirement the product, it launches new product or service to
satisfy the need of the market which result in new customers of product and retain
existing customers. Coca-cola study market carefully before launching any new product
which result in lesser risk.
 Select the channel of Distribution- The goods or services are distributed physically
through various channels such as wholesaler, retailer and third party channel. According
to the need, Coca-cola selects distribution channel and the finished goods are supplied to
customers.
 Create a market plan- The marketing formulates a marketing action plan to finalise that
when the activities will takes place, how it will takes place and who will perform. The
detailed information of marketing activities is described in a plan which result in no
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confusion and effective operations of activities. Coca-cola formulate marketing plan to
describe the detailed information and channelise their effort according to the plan which
result in productivity.
 Study the economic and political environment – To survive in long run, the marketing
has to understand the economic, social, political environment which affects the operation
of business enterprise. The political factors incudes government policies and regulations
such as social norms, economic rules and tax policies. After assessment of these factors,
the strategies of Coca-cola are formulated for customer satisfaction and profit
maximisation.
Responsibilities of marketing function-
 Responsibilities towards enterprise- It is the responsibility of marketing to achieve the
pre-determined goal of the organisation. To increase the profitability of organisation, the
plans are required to formulate to organise, coordinate and control all the marketing
activities. The marketing of Coca-cola is responsible for maintaining quality and
quantity of production through conducting market research. It also forecast sale and plan
production for the future. It also formulate strategies related to advertisement, sales
promotion and specify the channel of distribution of goods or services. It is also
responsible for controlling credit policy and estimating cost of marketing activities and
maintain relationship with customer by providing after sales service.
 Responsibility towards employees- The marketing posses higher responsibilities
towards employees of the organisation. It is responsible for providing proper training and
compensation to employees according to their skills and capabilities. The marketing of
Coca-cola establish welfare scheme for the employees to motivate them to work
effectively which benefits the organisation. The marketing of Coca-cola directly
coordinated activities with different employees and evaluate their performance and
provide suggestions of problems related with employees.
 Relationship towards society- The marketing has a responsibility towards society as
well. The responsibility of providing goods and services according to the requirement of
society. The maintenance of regular supply of goods or services with reasonable prices
and increasing employment opportunities for people and protecting the society from the
economic slump. Coca-cola offers wide range of non-alcoholic ready to drink beverages
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in the sparkling, juice, water, energy, tea, coffee categories. The company is committed
towards promoting sustainable growth in respect with offering value to society.
 Relationship towards customers- The marketing is responsible for identifying the needs
and want of the consumer and fulfilling their demand by maintaining regular supply of
goods and services and provide after sale-services to customer. The creation of awareness
about the new products or the new uses of existing product and removing doubts from the
mind of consumer is essential responsibility of marketing. Coca-cola serves their
customers by account management teams, providing services according to the needs. The
company continually look for methods to reduce cost and to provide better quality
product and more diverse product to their customers.
M1 Analyse the roles and responsibilities of marketing in context of the marketing environment.
The roles and responsibilities of marketing function affects marketing environment in
following manner-
Positive Impacts-
 Effective implementation of roles and responsibilities helps in monitoring the marketing
environment by identifying new trends and using that information as opportunities.
Marketing must observe six major environmental factors which are demographic related
to gender or caste, socio cultural, natural, technological, political and legal forces. Coca-
cola conduct the research to study all the above stated factors to analyse the marketing
environment and grab the opportunity present in the market.
 The roles and responsibilities if properly compiled it strengthens the company against its
competitive force in marketing environment.
 The marketing environment involves communication to outside world which is properly
implemented by marketing function results in benefit to company.
Negative Impacts-
 The roles and responsibility if not complied properly it will result in wastage of resources
as the proper analysis of marketing environment is not conducted.
 The analysis of marketing environment is not undertaken, it will make all the effort of
marketing function useless as all the effort will channelise in wrong direction which do
not result in achievement of objective.
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P2 Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational Context.
The success and growth of any organisation depend upon the efforts of marketing team
and it makes marketing to maintain strong relationship with other function. Developing a
effective marketing plan require coordination with other functional areas. The marketing
function of Coca-cola coordinates with other functional area to remove potential conflict while
formulation of corporate plan. The integration of marketing function with other function as
follows-
 Marketing with Finance- The marketing function is required to work closely with
finance function to met the need of research, promotion and distribution through adequate
budget formed by financial department. The financial function ensure that organisation
work according to the financial capabilities. They want to make work each function in
allocated budget to utilise the financial resources effectively. The marketing function
might want to spend more when profitable situation emerges. The marketing function is
likely to focus on sales volume and attaining market share whereas finance department is
concerned with cash flow, covering cost and paying back investment as soon as possible.
The use of the fund provided by finance should be in favour of finance function and
enterprise. The finance function of Coca-cola is operated by finance expert and it
coordinates with marketing function to make sure that financial resources are efficiently
used for the welfare of the organisation. The Coca-cola is improving its financial
strengths by merging or acquiring to generate sales for more profit and the interest is
seeked by marketing function by influencing those companies. So they work together to
achieve target objective.
 Marketing with Human Resource- The marketing function coordinate with human
resource to assure that the skills are appropriate and staffing level is according to the
standard as it involves selection of people who will perform marketing activities in
future. The selection of candidate should be based on the specific standards mentioned by
the marketing department. The candidate should possess skills and capabilities to perform
research and bring new idea to develop a new product or modify the existing product.
The candidate should be able to meet target of the sales and formulate a competent sales
team. Effective employees are assets of the organisation who helps in achieving the
objective of marketing objective which result in achievement of organisation objective.
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Coca-cola has specified policies for selecting candidates who will perform the marketing
activities. The first procedure involves selection through written test and group discussion
is conducted and few candidates are selected who are required to face various type of
interviews such as personal interview or stress interview. The proper analysis is
organised to check ability of employee and then the process of selection takes place.
 Marketing with Production- The marketing function identifies the needs and wants of
the consumer through proper conducting research which includes surveys about the
quality, value ability and pricing expected by the consumers. Through conducting proper
research, the information is provided to the production function which allows them to
produce which required and demanded. It results in effective utilisation of resources
related to operations which makes producing product at reasonable price. The research
also highlights the things that people are disliking about the product and inform to the
production function to eliminate that and improve the quality of product. The marketing
decide the distribution channel of product according to the nature of the product. Coca-
cola has given importance in providing wide range of drinks such as Coke, Fanta and
sprite which require inner wall which is smooth and inner surface is rough which causes
fluid to experience mechanical action. It makes carbon dioxide to emerge the liquid and
develop into gas. The procedure is used to maintain quality whose guidelines are
provided by marketing function.
 Marketing with IT- The IT includes element which are computer software, information
systems, computer hardware and programming languages. The marketing is concerned
with how technology can be used in generating information related to market that is how
to get information , how to process it, how we store information and how we disseminate
it through voice, image or graphic. The IT includes website which is an electronic object
on internet which are used for company to provide information to consumer or for many
reasons. This result in interaction of product with customer and customer can also buy the
product and maintain or build long term relation with the consumer. IT supports and
enhance Customer relationship management through a team which is analysed. The IT of
Coca-cola coordinate with marketing department in promoting the products of the
company through the use of Internet. Coca-cola possess its own website where all the
information is available related to company for outsiders such as consumer or investor.
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This websites helps in promotion of the product by providing every detailed information
related to it.
 Marketing with Research and development- The research function conducts research
and innovate new ideas for creation of new products and services. The needs and want of
the customer should be considered with a new research and development to produce
product that satisfy needs of consumer. The research is applied in companies, universities
and sometimes to countries. Marketing integrates with researcher to assure that the needs
of customers are presented and the process of manufacturing is analysed and researched
and based upon the factor of marketing mix. The R&d cannot operate without marketing
as it provides information about consumer taste and preference. R&D of Coca-cola is
developing changes in existing product as the preference of the customer is changing
time to time. The R&D and marketing function of Coca-cola coordinating with each other
to meet the need of the consumer b y creating product and services. They work together
to achieve the goals of the company which is generating profit through more sales.
Thus, marketing area integrates with all other functional areas so that the company can attain
their objective both functional level and organisational level through proper utilisation of all the
resources available with the company.
M2 Analyses the interrelationship between marketing and other functional units
Marketing is the central function of an organisation which helps to fill the gap between
several functions of the organisation. In these they relates with other functional unit and
operational unit that help an organisation to accomplish their goals with in minimum time period.
Positive impact
 This helps an organisation to inter-relate with all functions activities of an organisation.
It is easy for them to complete their goals through which they manage and organise
their gaols effectively and efficiently. Employees of all departments work together but to inter-relate between all of them
marketing department plays crucial role in organisation.
Negative impact
 The marketing process is long term while to inter-connecting between all of them
managers need to invest more time and finance in the organisation. This results that there
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is delay in decision which dis-satisfies customers because products are not available with
in minimum time period.
 There is difference between operational and functional departments of an organisation.
Marketing department manages their goals with operational departments which reduce
performance for company as they miss opportunities while communicating with others.
TASK 2
P3 Marketing mix that helps to achieve business objective
Marketing mix is defined as foundation model for business which contain four P's that
helps an organisation to achieve their objective by formulating effective strategies such as . It
includes price, place, promotion and product through which it is easy for organisation to make
effective decisions regarding to launch a new product. In context of Coca-cola marketing mix
helps them to increase their strength through adopting essential changes that increases value in
their products (Carter and et. al., 2016). This task covers the comparison between two
companies that operate their business in similar industry.
Particular Coca-cola Pepsi
Product Coca-cola is a well known
organisation in beverage industry
that provides wide range of
products. It includes energy
drink, juice, cola drinks and
many more which determines
that they cover large area of
market by satisfying the needs of
customers. In context to achieve
business objective products are
essential element for an
organisation which determines
that they are developed to
increase the profits by selling
products to customers.
Pepsi is operating their business
in the food and beverage industry
and recognise as top brand of
industry. Soft drinks, chips,
energy drink and juices are the
products that are manufactured
by Pepsi for satisfying the needs
of customers and generating
more revenue for the
organisation. The strength of
Pepsi is that they positioned their
product strongly in market which
involves diet and cola that helps
to achieve organisational
objective.
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Price Coca-cola is facing tough
competition in drink market so it
is essential for them to decide
effective price that helps to gain
positive results through attracting
more number of customers.
Beverage industry is a type of
oligopoly market as there is less
number of existing players. As
both coca-coal and pepsi produce
substitute products. For these
they execute competitive pricing
strategy in which customers
found similar prices compare to
their competitors.
Pepsi is recognised as the
dominant organisation that offer
various types of products to
customers to increase the sale of
their products. For this they
implement effective prices for
products. In context of Pepsi
there is tough competition in
industry which signifies prices
plays a crucial part in the sale of
products. In context of Pepsi they
increase or decide price of their
products through increasing
value in their products.
Place Coca-cola is providing their
products in more than 200
countries which signifies that
their products are available at
every place in world. Cafes, gas
station, movie theatres etc. are
specific places in order to target
their customers through which
companies increased their
products. Along with these it
also helps to accomplish their
objective with in predetermined
period through increasing the
market area for products.
Pepsi also covers large area of
market through which they sale
their products in huge amount.
Like for these they approach
towards customers through retail
shops, whole-seller, stores etc.
that provide their products
through to customers quickly. To
achieve particular objectives or
sale of products management of
Pepsi distribute their products
with the help of local bottling
partners through creating
agreement between them.
Promotion The promotion is the essential Promotion is the best tool to
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element for an organisation that
helps them to influence prospects
into leads by creating effective
advertisement and sales
promotion technique in order to
increasing the customer base for
their products. Coca-cola achieve
their objectives through
organising different CSR
activities and social promoting
activities that helps to increase
sale of products.
increase the sale of products in
these it includes different
methods through which they
increases sale of their products. It
includes different social media
advertisement, online promotion,
celebrity endorsement etc.
through which organisation
increases sale of their products.
In context of Pepsi they
implemented aggressive
marketing to enhance the
promotion of their products.
Process Process is considers as the way
of doing different activities it is
mainly used to implement
effective methods such as supply
chain management, online and
offline distribution of products
through which customers
approach products quickly. Coca-
cola update the process to
manufacture their goods which
are essential for them to achieve
their objectives.
Pepsi uses the process activity in
order to implement effective
planning process through which
it is easy for management to
interact with customers which
governs that management
develop their objectives
according to the marketing need
of customers. Along with these it
recognise essential changes that
are required for company to
adopt in process system as it
improves productivity of
organisation.
People All the physical or human factors
that helps an organisation to
complete their objectives are
Pepsi provides training or
development to its employees
with in minimum time period ue
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