Marketing Essentials: Coca-Cola's Marketing Strategies and Functions

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Marketing Essentials: Coca Cola
Unit 2: Marketing Essentials

Table of contents
Contents
1 Explain the role of marketing as a function of business, opposed to marketing as a
department in a company...........................................................................................................2
2 Explain the structure of the marketing department of your selected organisation, and
succinctly explain a minimum of two different marketing roles...............................................3
3 Provide an overview of the marketing process, and analyse the importance of the marketing
environment to the marketing function......................................................................................5
4 Analyse how the marketing function influences and interrelates with other departments in
the organisation..........................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8
1

1 Explain the role of marketing as a function of business, opposed to
marketing as a department in a company.
Marketing as functions involves researching, packing and presenting a product or services to
customer. According to the American Marketing Association, "marketing is an activity, set of
institutions and process for creating, communicating, delivering, exchanging and offering that
have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large" (Meyer, 2018). This
definition suggests marketing is one of the processes of offering value to customers through
product and services. Customers remain the heart of the marketing process and strategies that
are developed by marketing department. Maslow in his theory "Hierarchy of needs" talked
about human psychology and developed connection between human needs and desired
(Cherry, 2017). Based on this theory, if marketer understands the needs of their target
customers then they can use it as a selling point to influence. However, before globalisation
for organisations marketing was just a department which was responsible for implementing
marketing strategy, conducting promotional campaign, monitoring marketing plan and
collecting feedback from market and communicate the same with other business units,
whereas marketing functions are not just limited to sales , promotion and market research.
In modern organisations like Coca-cola, significant differences can be found between
marketing functions and marketing department. Marketing as a functions are responsible for
conducting research on the target market. Similarly it is responsible for understanding current
market trends and designing product or services that can cater the need of target market.
However marketing as a department is responsible for defining the existing brand. For
instance, marketing department of Coca Cola defines its image in market, whereas marketing
as a functions conduct research on target audience of Coca Cola. Further, the role of
marketing as a function is producing a market plan while marketing department is
accountable for producing marketing and promotional material. One of the major roles of
marketing department is to monitoring and managing social media contents that are
developed for better marketing purpose, while marketing as a functions are responsible for
strategically overseeing advertisement. Modern multinational companies consider marketing
as functions which contribute towards other functions of the business. According to
Martensen and Mouritsen, (2017) there are four types of marketing functions: the broad
spectrum, the hesitant, the traditional and the market creating. However these functions are
not consistent with every role; however the role of marketing department remains consistent.
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2 Explain the structure of the marketing department of your selected
organisation, and succinctly explain a minimum of two different marketing
roles
Coca cola due to the vastness of their services has divided their business into six sub units
and each of these sub sections are responsible for region-specific marketing and accountable
for local advertising. The company has decided to use languages of the country where they
operate in a regional basis. For, sentence important region like Great Britain has a separate
marketing structure which is given below
Figure: Marketing Department of Great Britain
Source: Created by Author
The marketing director is the head of the marketing department and in each of the sub
section there are different manager marketing directors. Notably Coca Cola has a
decentralised organisational structure where decisions are taken on a regional basis. Each of
these managers is accountable for different functions within marketing department of Coca
Cola, In order to understand the significant of this unique structure of marketing department,
it is necessary to understand the different roles of these managers.
Role of Youth and Adult Brand Director: According to Wroblowská (2016) brand managers
are responsible for ensuring the fact that products, services and products line which fall under
their section reverberate with current and future customers. Further, in order to do so it is the
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marketingDirectorExecutiveSecretary

responsibility of a brand manager to constantly monitoring current market trend and identify
competitive products within the market.
Coca Cola offer different beverages to customer and most of its products are targeting the
young customers. The role of Youth and adult brand director is to make marketing effort for
Young customers. According to Alon et al (2016) young customers are valuable customers as
they influence the purchasing decision of their peer group and family. If a brand gains it
popularity, it easily penetrates in the market and develops a strong and popular brand image.
The Youth and adult brand director of Coca Cola is responsible for adopting brand strategy
for the Youth and Adult customers. Similarly it is the responsibility of the Youth and adult
brand director of Coca Cola to develop products and prices that can attract young and adult
customers. Also the Youth and adult brand director of Coca cola is accountable for creating
promotional guarantee and to create and manage product branding.
Role of Head of media and marketing Assets: A digital marketing manager is accountable
for creating, implementing and managing marketing campaign that promotes product and
services of the company across social media (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Digital
marketing managers has significant role for developing brand awareness among customers in
the digital space and generating leads for the business. The head of media and marketing
assets of Coca Cola is responsible for promoting their marketing campaign across digital
platform, drive website traffic and generate lead for the business. Further, he is responsible
for identification and evaluation of new digital technology and utilising web analytics tools
for better optimization of marketing campaign of Coca Cola. As the head of media and
marketing assets, this marketing manager of Coca Cola are empower to take decision
regarding media strategies and find ways how to represent various products of Coca Cola in
front of customer through digital platform and promoting brand awareness among customers.
According to Heinze et al (2016) this job of digital media manager requires to influence
others and generate results through collaboration. Therefore, the media head of Coca Cola
must be capable of influencing others and generate results while collaborating with other
department such as sales, HR and finance.
4

3 Provide an overview of the marketing process, and analyse the
importance of the marketing environment to the marketing function.
Marketing Process includes different ways that create value for the customers and satisfy
customer's needs (Heinze et al., 2016). In marketing process it is essential to examine the
situation to identify opportunities. Marketing process is deliberate series of steps that help
organisation to identify and reach their goal. For a successful marketing process, it is
necessary to start with a mission. For instance, one of the missions of Coca Cola is to create
value and make a difference. This mission statement clearly suggests that their idea is to
create value for the customer through their products. Developing mission is the first step of
marketing process and it is critical to the success of marketing plan. The next step is situation
analysis that includes identifying marketing opportunities by using different marketing
analysis tools, such as SWOT analysis, 5C analysis, and PEST analysis. Coca Cola uses
different marketing analysis tools to identify the opportunity within the market. One of the
essential market analysis tools for Coca Cola is PEST analysis as it discovers the political,
economic, social and Technical environment of each business locations (countries) where it is
operating their business.
Step three in marketing process of Coca Cola is Marketing Strategy; however marketing
strategies of Coca Cola is different as per the region. The first step in strategy development
stage is to defining target audience for the company, it is significant for the company as the
marketing goals are developed based on the target Audience. Based on the marketing goals,
management further develop a budget plan.
The next step is marketing mix which the most crucial step in marketing process and the
success of the marketing plan is connected with this step. This marketing mix is often
addressed as 4Ps of marketing and it includes product development, pricing, promotion and
place and distribution. In this stage marketer develop the product design, fixed the prices of
the product, create promotional strategy and identify right place of distribution such as online
or through retail (Stead and Hastings, 2018). Coca Cola over the years is known for
developing refreshing drinks under affordable price. For brand promotion, Coca Cola believe
in both online and offline marketing and products are majorly distributed through physical
stores.
Implementation and control is the final stage on the marketing process and in this stage
company reach to customers to inform and convince the about the product. In this stage Coca
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Cola implement their promotional plan and convince customers that it produces the best
refreshing drinks across the globe at most affordable price. The next step is to gather
resources (human and financial) that help to place the product into market and develop
calendar to keep everything under the track; this can help to manager marketing goals of
Coca Cola.
4 Analyse how the marketing function influences and interrelates with
other departments in the organisation
Modern marketing functions are interconnected with various departments of organisations
such as Human Resource, Finance and Sales and functions of these departments are
influenced by the marketing functions. Human Resource and Financial department are two
most significant departments within organisational structure and organisations are dependents
on these two departments for their growth and profitability along with the marketing
department, however if worked independently none of these department are capable of
making desired profit opportunity for organisations.
Finance: Financial department is responsible for various financial aspects such as feasibility
of projects, costs, profit and loss, and sales performances growth, annual financial which is
quite unlike marketing functions, yet they are interrelated (Meier, 2016). For instance,
Marketing functions include developing strategy for target market and brand promotions,
however brand promotion require right budget allocation which is done by finance
department. Therefore, marketing department need to consult and communicate their need of
resources with finance department for getting the right budget. In this process marketing
functions influences budget allocation of the finance team. Thus, marketing functions
influence budget of the company while financial department decide the final budget for the
marketers.
Human Resource: Marketing functions are aligned with brand promotion targeting better
sales of the company, while Human resource department is responsible for engaging
employees who are capable of brand development, brand promotion and better sales. Many of
the scholars found close relations between marketing department with the HR department and
they developed critical argument that support that there not a huge difference between
marketing department and Human resource Department. The interrelation between marketing
and the HR department is motivating customer behaviour which impacts the organisational
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performances. Erasmus et al (2016) opined that talent acquisition is critical for eliminating
big challenges within the organisation. Along with the growth of the organisations, it is
essential for HR department to select and recruit the right candidate. Marketing department
helps organisation to get the right candidate by developing brand value, while right talent
develop brand awareness in the market by establishing appropriate communication with the
customers.
Modern organisations are using social media as their platform for digital marketing; however
Human resource department is responsible for allocating the right candidates who are able to
build communication over the digital platform, developing brand awareness, generating
traffic and converting it into successful sales. Since, employees are accountable for
developing brand value and generating sales, so marketing department communicate about
skills and competencies they look for in a candidate and influence the recruitment process of
HR department. Based on the recruitment of the marketing department, HR manager set their
recruitment and selection goals. Not only marketing functions influence the selection process
but it also influence the rewards and recognition process because often HR department select
employees for rewards or promotion based of their performance in marketing department.
Chances of receiving reward or higher remuneration increases for employees who are
outstanding performers in marketing department.
Therefore based on the above discussion it can be identified that marketing department
influence the budget process of companies which is done under the supervision of finance
department. Similarly, selection and rewards systems are influence by marketing functions, as
organisations tend to recruit candidate who are good with brand promotion and can be a good
marketer.
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References
Alon, I., Jaffe, E., Prange, C. and Vianelli, D., 2016. Global marketing: contemporary theory,
practice, and cases. Routledge.
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2019. Digital marketing. Pearson UK.
Cherry, K., 2017. Maslow’sHierarchy of Needs. Dursun, A.(2011). Dede Korkut
Hikâyelerinde Halk Hukuku. Electronic TurkishStudies, 6(4).
Erasmus, B., Strydom, J.W. and Rudansky-Kloppers, S. eds., 2016. Introduction to business
management. Oxford University Press Southern Africa.
Heinze, A., Fletcher, G., Rashid, T. and Cruz, A., 2016. Digital and social media marketing:
a results-driven approach. Routledge.
Martensen, A. and Mouritsen, J., 2017. Prioritising marketing activities in different types of
marketing functions. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 28(11-12), pp.1264-
1284.
Meier, J., 2016. 12 Creating a Partnership between Marketing and Finance. Accountable
Marketing: Linking marketing actions to financial performance, p.149.
Meyer, R., 2018. Reflections on “Transformative Marketing: The Next 20 Years”.
Stead, M. and Hastings, G., 2018. Advertising in the social marketing mix: getting the
balance right. In Social Marketing(pp. 29-43). Psychology Press.
Wroblowská, Z., 2016. Requirements for brand managers and product managers responsible
for competitiveness of product and brands. Journal of Competitiveness, 8(3).
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