MKT101A Marketing Fundamentals: A Deep Dive into Coca-Cola's Marketing

This discussion board post analyzes the marketing strategies of the Coca-Cola Company, addressing key marketing concepts and forces. The student explores various marketing processes, including product development, promotion, distribution, and pricing, emphasizing the importance of brand value and customer satisfaction. The assignment delves into the influence of competitive forces, particularly monopolistic competition, on Coca-Cola's marketing strategies and the importance of market research, including qualitative and quantitative methods, to stay ahead of the competition. The analysis highlights the need for continuous monitoring of competitors and adapting strategies to meet customer needs, aiming for a deeper understanding of market dynamics and strategic planning within the marketing environment. The paper also touches upon marketing management processes like analyzing opportunities, researching target markets, and evaluating marketing plans, providing a comprehensive overview of marketing fundamentals within a real-world context.

Running head: MARKETING CONCEPTS
MARKETING CONCEPTS
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

1MARKETING CONCEPTS
Chosen company: Coca Cola Company
Question 1:
Marketing is defined by a set of processes and concepts which works on the sole
purpose of satisfying customer requirements. The various processes of marketing involve
different steps which contribute to different aspects of marketing. Production of goods,
promotions, distributing network, the prices and the ideas behind the product all are the
various processes of marketing. Marketing is not only selling an item but creating an image
or a brand value of the product which can give trust and satisfy the customers (Brunswick,
2014). This helps to maintain a healthy relation with the customers which creates a beneficial
position for the company and helps it to maintain a dynamic relation with its shareholders.
Besides these marketing processes there are different marketing concepts which need
to be understood to carry out the marketing processes successfully. The first concept is the
production concept which focuses on the availability and affordability of the good. Constant
development of the product and efficient distribution system are keys to this concept
(Armstrong, Adam, Denize, & Kotler, 2014). The second one is the product concept which
focuses on the quality of the product. The third concept is the selling which believes that
promotions and availability is the key to marketing. The fourth concept is the marketing
factor which studies the market needs and tries to cater accordingly. The final concept is the
societal concept which focuses on the development of product more efficiently to cut out
competition and bring in a healthy social impact.
Coca Cola being one of the most well-known global brands require effective catering
to its customer’s needs and constantly maintaining its products quality. They need to maintain
healthy relation with their customers. Hence, it requires following the marketing processes
and concepts.

2MARKETING CONCEPTS
Question 2:
One of the explicit Marketing forces that highly determine the marketing strategies of
the Coca-Cola Company is the Competitive force. A competitive force is a micro-
environment factor which is a force which affects the company directly and can influence to
plan its strategies accordingly to serve the customers (Ibidunni, 2013). Competition with other
companies who create similar products like Pepsi can lead Coca Cola to formulate newer
strategies or marketing plan. This ability to plan and change is within the internal structure of
the company and the company can control the required change.
There are different kinds of competitive forces. Monopoly defines a market where are
no competitors. Oligopoly defines a market competition where there are a few big players.
The third is the monopolistic competition where there are many competitors. However, the
product differentiation creates a healthy competition and leads to innovation (Nocco,
Ottaviano, & Salto, 2014). The last type of competition is pure competition where there are
unlimited numbers of competitors.
The competition that Coca Cola Company faces is the monopolistic competition,
where there are many competitors with different types of products. To tackle this situation,
the Coca Cola Company requires to continuously monitor and analyse the marketing
strategies and behaviours of the different competitors and determine how the these strategies
are affecting their business. The analysis will help the Coca Cola Company to devise their
own strategy in order to face the competition and satisfy their customer needs better than the
other companies.

3MARKETING CONCEPTS
Question 3:
The Competitive force has a huge impact on the Coca Cola Company. It is very
essential to develop a system to tackle this force to develop better marketing strategies and
survive in the market. The company needs to regularly monitor the competitors and for this
they need to follow certain steps (Schmidt, Spann, & Zeithammer, 2014). Firstly, the company
should focus on the information that they need to analyse. Secondly, the company requires
analysing the information and interpreting its impact on the company. Thirdly, the
information needs to be considered and a new strategy needs to be developed.
However, while doing the analysis and interpretation it should be always kept in mind
that how much impact the obtained information can have on the customers, or are influential
in the company’s business growth. These can help the company to measure the information
and devise new ways which can bring in additional development of the company to have an
upper hand over the competitors.
These type of analysis requires market research which can be divided into two parts
namely, Qualitative research and quantitative. Qualitative involves expert opinions and
advice while the quantitative research relies more on data, statistics and measurable
information (Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström, & Freundt, 2014). Amalgamation of these two
methods can help the company identify the problems of the market using data and statistics
and the solutions can be devised by advice of the experts accordingly. This can help the
company attain better marketing strategy compared to the competitors.

4MARKETING CONCEPTS
Reference:
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. (2014). Principles of marketing. Pearson
Australia.
Brunswick, G. J. (2014). A chronology of the definition of marketing. Journal of Business &
Economics Research (Online), 12(2), 105.
Ibidunni, O. S. (2013). marketing Management: practical perspective.
Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions
for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), 1-12.
Nocco, A., Ottaviano, G. I., & Salto, M. (2014). Monopolistic competition and optimum
product selection. American Economic Review, 104(5), 304-09.
Schmidt, K. M., Spann, M., & Zeithammer, R. (2014). Pay what you want as a marketing
strategy in monopolistic and competitive markets. Management Science, 61(6), 1217-
1236.