Comparative Analysis: Coca-Cola and Toyota's Theories of Success

This report provides a comparative analysis of the business strategies employed by Coca-Cola and Toyota, two global industry leaders. The Coca-Cola section examines the company's consumer marketing, commercial leadership, and franchise leadership approaches, highlighting how these strategies have contributed to its market penetration and brand recognition. The analysis of Toyota focuses on the "Toyota Way," detailing its components such as long-term thinking, continuous process flow, the pull system, leveling out the workload, and a culture of stopping to fix problems. The report explores how these principles, particularly Lean Manufacturing and Just-in-Time Production, have been instrumental in Toyota's success. The report references various academic sources to support its findings.

Theories Behind Success 1
THEORIES BEHIND BUSINESS SUCCESS
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Theories Behind Success 2
Coca-cola Company
Coca-cola was established in 1986, by John Pemberton in Atlanta.He later sold it to Asa Griggs
Candler, a businessman who brought it to its dominance in the world. It’s dominant in
manufacturing carbonated soft drinks (Cortes 2012, p. 123). The name originates from two
ingredients; kola nuts and coca leaves. Coca-cola products form the highest percentage of soft
drink consumed. It has made the most catalyst for social interaction. This has made a large
number of thirsty consumers around the world to enjoy it, therefore, the reason for the study.
Coca-cola Company has achieved a high level of penetration and recognition in the market as a
result of well-applied strategies (Wang 2015, 78). The company has applied the following
strategies to its success. Consumer marketing, commercial leadership and franchise leadership
(Cortes 2012, p. 46). Consumer marketing is designed to continue improving the consumer
awareness and likeness the various brands. This leads to long term growth in the in the unit case
volume per capita consumption hence the share worldwide of all the products. This has been
extended to the bottling partners and those who sell their products both locally and globally. The
company has millions of customers. It has therefore focused on enhancing the relationship with
the customers. This has been achieved by understanding individual needs about the business.
This has led to the provision of the right product and packaging. The company has dwelt on
franchise leadership (Cortes 2012, p. 123). This allows the Coca-cola to produce concentrated
syrup and leaves the final packaging to the bottles. This has enabled a common growth for both
the company and bottling partners. It achieves this by sharing the values, aligning incentives,
sense of urgency and flexibility of customers’ needs. The company works hand in hand with the
bottling partners to spot a system that enables them to acquire scales of efficiencies quickly. It
also shares the best practice throughout the bottling system. Under the leadership, the inward-

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looking has been rejuvenated as well as the reinvesting cost-cutting dividends in brand
development of its corporate culture.
Toyota Motors
Toyota is motor corporations mainly based in Japan. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of
automotive producing 10million vehicles per year. It was founded by 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda
(Siyo Min-kyo 2011, p. 145). Toyota Motor Corporation has five main brands of vehicles. These
include the Toyota brand, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Daihatsu. It also has shares of about 18.66% in
Subaru Corporation where 5.0% are in Isuzu and other joint-ventures in China, GAC Toyota and
Sichuan FAW Toyota Motor, as well as Toyota Kirloskar in India and Tpca in the Czech
Republic.
Toyota came up with a strategy that has seen it to the world’s top automotive manufacturing
company (Maioresu 2016, 90). The strategy is known as Toyota way. The strategy has been
reflected regarding Lean Manufacturing and Just in Time Production. It has been essential in the
development of the business methods and managerial values. There are four components in
Toyota way. These are long-term thinking as the basis of decision making in management. This
strategy dictates that one should act in such a way as to improve the company as a whole giving
value to both consumer and the society and always accepting responsibility for personal
behavior. This led to a long term commitment of the company to its employees, customers, and
society. Secondly, a continuation in the process flow has enabled the company to bring the
problems to the surface. The continuous flow is the opposite of the traditional batch and queue.
Working on as many parts as possible at the same time has been efficient. It improves quality by
addressing every problem as it arises as well as improving the flexibility hence very easy to

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respond to any change in the company. It also improves productivity since it’s much easy to
know what resources are needed when producing a specific item. The third strategy is the Pull
System to avoid overproduction (Siyo Min-kyo 2011, p. 145). In a piece flow; an operation does
not get what it requires from the next upstream operation until it is ordered. It is called a pull
system because the operation is aimed at pulling what it needs versus having it pushed on to it
for use, unlike the traditional batch, where a lot of parts are produced at the same time, placed in
an inventory and then moved to where they will be used. It minimizes what is held in buffer
replenishment stores and a number of items moving between sources and destinations.
The fourth strategy is leveling out the work load. This strategy aims at doing away with the
wastes. These might be as a result of over processing, overproduction, unnecessary transport,
excess inventory, defects, unnecessary movement, and unused employee’s creativity. This has
helped in stabilizing in the supply of the corporation. Hence customers don’t have to wait a much
longer period for production and delivery of their specified ordered products. The fifth strategy is
the built culture of stopping to fix problems and get quality right the first time. The idea is not
aimed at only stopping the problem but also solving it whether it is temporary or one that might
cause a long-quality problem. Thus this has seen the best products into the market.

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List of References
Cortés, R 2012, A secret history of coffee, coca & cola. Akashic Books, New York,
Gupta, S 2011, MIR talks to Stan Sthanunathan, Vice President of Marketing Strategy and
Insights, Coca-Cola Company. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review 3, 1
Maiorescu, R, 2016, Crisis management at General Motors and Toyota: An analysis of gender-
specific communication and media coverage. Public Relations Review 42, 4 (2016), 556-563.
Seo Min-Kyo. A Comparative Case Study on the CSR Strategies of Toyota and Hyundai Motors
in Chin. International Commerce and Information Review 13, 4 (2011), 149-174.
Wang, M 2015, Brief Analysis of Sports Marketing Strategy Adopted by Coca Cola Company,
Asian Social Science 11, 23