Competitive Advantages of Coca-Cola: Strategies and Recommendations

This report provides an analysis of The Coca-Cola Company's competitive advantages in the global market. It examines the company's strategies, including its strong brand recognition, financial resources, and distribution network. The report highlights Coca-Cola's tangible and intangible resources, such as its financial assets, technological advancements, and human resources. It also discusses the company's capabilities, including its ability to build infrastructure, develop training programs, and implement effective advertising strategies. The report identifies the company's need to diversify its product portfolio and focus on the non-carbonated beverage sector to remain competitive. The analysis underscores how these factors contribute to Coca-Cola's top position in the beverage industry, while also acknowledging areas for improvement. The report concludes with recommendations for future growth and sustained market leadership.

Running head: COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF COCA COLA
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF COCA COLA
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1COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF COCA COLA
The discussion aims to analyze the competitive advantages possessed by The Coca cola
Company in comparison to its other competitors in the global market. The discussion describes
the company’s strategy and methods to secure its top position. It also provides some
recommendations that the company needs to follow.
The Coca-Cola Company is the highest producer, supplier and wholesaler of carbonated
beverage in the world that is Coca-Cola. This company is best known for its soft drink coca cola.
It owns top four soft drink brands namely Coca-Cola, Sprite, Diet Coke, and Fanta (Coca-Cola
Global, 2017). The company also sells Barq's, Dr Pepper, Minute Maid, Crush, and many other
products. The coca cola company has a tough competitor in market, which is PepsiCo. A strong
growth of the company can be seen over the past five years. It seems that it has grown faster than
the entire global industry. The strength of its brand, continuous investment and successful
strategy has helped the company to achieve the success. The Coca Cola Company is also
benefitted from its highest position in the international market. On the other hand, PepsiCo its
rival, only has sufficient brand recognition to challenge TCCC. The Coca Cola Company has
always been benefitted with its history, which has contributed to acquire it present position.
Competitive advantages of the Coca Cola Company
 Coke FEMSA has been the largest bottle producer in America with total sales volume in
2006 and the second largest bottler in the world.
 FEMSA of Coca cola offers the best management training to their stuffs in order to uplift
the abilities and exchange experiences.
 Coca-Cola FEMSA had collaborated with Coke and decided to work and cultivate
advanced trade models. This has maximized their sales revenue (Peng, 2016).

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 It has taken over Jugos del Valle it is the biggest juice producing company of Mexico and
Brazil. This step has been taken to increase the brand’s presence in Latin America.
 Coca-Cola FEMSA maintains brilliant relationships with its consumers. The company
focuses in customizing its entire portfolio of packages as well as beverages according to
the needs of its customers.
 The company has a great portfolio of beverages to offer to the consumers. Not only that,
the company keeps on including new promising categories of products in order to capture
bigger market share.
 To make stronger bonds with its consumers and satisfy their requirements, Coke has
decided to open one-stop shops in all over the world by offering complete categories of
beverages like packaged water, sparkling drinks and juices.
 Coke's team members are dedicated and always remain involved in processes related to
the production as well as the organization (Wagner III & Hollenbeck, 2014). These team
members are prompt to handle any kind of socio political competitive and economic
changes in the organizational environments.
 The company always tries to encourage inventive business solutions in order to increase
its productive and distributive capacity to heighten operation efficiency.
 The Coca cola Company with its strong structure takes care of all challenges in the
industry. The challenges can be cost cuttings across the industry or surplus maximization
with strong promotions (Arcese, et al., 2015).
 International business in bottled water and soft drinks is low because these are of low
value comparing to the products of the Coca Cola company. The company analyses the

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international as well as domestic markets and produce the beverages according to the
market needs.
Capabilities and Resources
 Tangible
It contains financial and physical resources. In 2015, Coca-Cola has earned profit of €344
million. The market value is estimated at $ 45.41 billion. The company has the well built and
defendable financial resources, which is invested in major markets Investment money is
utilized in building the brand, infrastructure and expanding distribution network.
 Intangible
Status of Coca-Cola and technological resources are considered to be its intangible
resources. It invests to modern machinery as technological resource. The production procedure
of Coca-Cola is wholly automated. The machines increase the production procedure, stabilize the
quality and secure workplace environment. The cmpany keeps its network of hybrid engine truck
expanded to save fuel costs and reduce pollution.
 Human resources
Coca cola’s success depends largely on the employee motivation. Coca-Cola organizes
the test to know the engagement level and employee satisfaction. They build an ideal place of
work where people enjoy gym, coke, with flexible working hours. The training and development
activities are also focused. The employees are kept motivated with attractive salary. A large
number of employees are outsourced from different countries. Therefore, the human resources
managers are recruited from around the world. Coca-Cola organizes international training

4COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF COCA COLA
courses to identify talented managers for senior positions and build an international management
team.
Capabilities of Coca-Cola
The discussion mentions the strong financial resources, which help Coca-Cola to develop
the large-scale market worldwide. They are used in building infrastructure, training and
distribution network development. This enables them to bear the long-term losses into the
potential market investment. The financial resources are used in implementing different
advertising strategies by advertisements on newspapers, TV, posters and magazines.
Coca-Cola knows the method to reach the customers by shortening the space between
consumers and the products. Coca-Cola possesses a unique organizational potential. They
operate more than 700 thousand associates and offer more than 500 soft drink brands in more
than two hundred countries in the world. The products can be found almost in all food joints,
school, cinemas and vending machines on the road. Brand reputation of Coca-Cola has been
established after more than a century. Coca-Cola has a lot of loyal consumers from them the
company earns stable profits for development. Coca Cola’s brand name recognition is higher
than its other competitors are. Coca-Cola has built a positive working ambience so that the
employees can share new ideas and their sincere comments. This led the company to find new
business ideas on one hand talent on the other. The employee's freehearted comments also help
Coca-Cola to solve many problems. Therefore, it can be said that Coca-Cola has more creative
and can solve problems early.

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Coca-Cola successfully applies the traits of talent localization. The company recruits a
large number of local stuffs whenever they invade a new market. This helps in increasing the
better understanding of the new markets and penetration gets faster.
Recommendations
The company should reduce its dependence on carbonated beverage, which is their chief
production. The company should bring more diversity in its product portfolio. It needs to focus
into its noncarbonated sector to remain competitive in the global market. In developed countries,
the people have started to prefer health drinks to beverages. The company needs to produce a
healthy alternative.
Therefore, from the above analysis it can be deducted that all the above factors have
contributed to the company to secure the top position in beverage industry. In spite of these
beneficial factors, The Coca cola Company has some weaknesses, which need to overcome.

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References:
Arcese, G., Flammini, S., Lucchetti, M. C., & Martucci, O. (2015). Evidence and experience of
open sustainability innovation practices in the food sector. Sustainability, 7(7), 8067-
8090.
Coca-Cola Global. (2017). Coca-cola.com. Retrieved 27 September 2017, from
http://www.coca-cola.com/
Peng, M. W. (2016). Global business. Cengage learning.
Wagner III, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2014). Organizational behavior: Securing competitive
advantage. Routledge.