Coca Cola 's Strategic Planning

SWOT analysis is a fundamental tool in marketing plan that helps to assess Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of any organization (Pahl & Richter, 2009).

The SWOT analysis is a great way for companies or organizations to determine their brand and product’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In order to more effectively determine these areas, separation of internal and external issues within the company or association is crucial.

[pic] The Coca-Cola Company was originally established in 1886 by Dr. John Styth Pemberton, since then the company has developed into one of the largest companies in the world and accomplishing more than they could ever imagine such as becoming the worlds number one manufacturer of soft drinks, operating worldwide in over 200 countries, having over a billion cans of Coca-Cola consumed everyday worldwide, to become the first company to both produce and use plastic bottles made from recycled material, the red and white trademark is one of the most recognized symbol in the world etc. shows you that Coca-Cola has come along way and continues to achieve sustainable, quality growth.

Coca Cola has differentiated its product and services that are valued by its customer. Its product are based on customer’s preferences, with affordable price and made easily accessible.

Coca-Cola is the largest non-alcohol beverage manufacturer in the world, which holds approximate 43% market share. The firm is also ranked in top 20 in the Fortune 500 in terms of the largest capital with over 100 billion dollars in assets. John Stith Pemberton is the founder of the firm, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. During its 100 years of history, Coca-Cola has grown its businesses substantially in the globe. Currently, the firm presents over 160 countries, including China, India, Japan, and South East Asia countries. The main objectives of the firm that is it can serve its products to all consumers in the globe, and expands its businesses to the majority of strategic regions. In order to grow and expand its present to the other major markets, Coca-Cola executes its marketing strategies based on three different categories, including price, place, partnerships, and core products. These marketing methods have supported Coca-Cola to sustain, and grow in the soft drink industry.

SWOT analysis stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat analysis. This section talks about the SWOT analysis of Coca Cola generally in Table 1 and three points among Table 1 will be explained further in the following paragraphs. Firstly, Coca Cola’s strength analysis which is titled as the top three of the Best Global Brands in 2013. Secondly, it’s main weakness which is the danger in consuming soft drinks for health. Lastly, PepsiCo as Coca Cola’s major threat among other companies.

In today's ultra-competitive world, organizations strive to sustain long-term growth by having a distinctive competitive advantage. Coca-Cola believes its long-term success would only be sustained through a responsible business model with good corporate governance. Essentially, this has lead to the setting up of their "quadrant framework" to develop and communicate core values (in the community, market place, environment and workplace) and strategy to its bottlers.

According to Nicole Fallon of the Business News Daily, a SWOT analysis is an analytical framework that can help any company face its greatest challenges and find its most promising new markets, by identifying the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (2017). It allows for an extensive evaluation of the company’s internal and external resources as well as current and future threats that the company may face. This process can be a great asset in determining and exploring new initiatives, as it helps to identify areas of improvement within the organization while helping with the facilitation and implementation of new business policies. This process is crucial in refreshing the strategies and tactics of any

Biedenharn sent a case to Asa Griggs Candler, who owned the Company. Candler thanked him but took no action. One of his nephews already had urged that Coca-Cola be bottled, but Candler focused on fountain sales.

Strategic planning is associate structure management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, establish agreement around intended outcomes or results, strengthen operations, guarantee that employees and other stakeholders are operating toward common goals, regulate the organization's direction in response to a changing atmosphere. It is a disciplined effort that produces basic actions and decisions that form and guide what a corporation is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does it, with a spotlight on the longer term.

The Coca-Cola Company is a leader in the beverage industry with a reputable brand and strong global presence. According to the Coca-Cola Company’s mission statement and 2020 vision, some of its goals include:

The stiff competition that exists in the industries requires that different strategies are taken that are aimed at increasing the profitability of the business. Coca-Cola Company has been on the rise beating competition from most of its rivals. The company uses marketing strategies to be able to attract more customers and be able to overcome the stiff competition. With the right marketing strategies, a company can increase its profits and hence increase its growth especially for a multinational corporation such as Coca-Cola. Therefore, each time a particular strategy does not bring the best results, a strategic shift is always important to be able to ensure that the company performance is not affected.

Evio is the new product by Coca-Cola, which maintains the good taste of diet coke, and meanwhile, provides great energy for the consumers. Especially, Evio contains much less calories and sugar than diet coke. The new product is especially targeted at young consumers aged 25-40, who pursues a healthy and energetic lifestyle. Evio will be offered in several key markets like the US, Australia and China. In the recent years, the major cause for Coca-Cola’s market decline was that people pay attention to importance of health and turned to healthier drinks with fewer calories (Kell n. pag.). Therefore, Coca-Cola is likely to benefit from Evio in three aspects. First, Evio will update consumers’ understanding of Coke.

Whenever we go to any supermarket, we often see that there is some new soft drink on special. Drinking soft drinks has become a part of our daily life and sometimes we may not even realise how much efforts go into launching a new soft drink and the reasons behind such a launch. We as human being like to try something new be it soft drinks or any other product. Hence, when we come to know what was going on behind the scenes before we got to taste the new product, it would definitely add to our knowledge. Recently, we have seen that Coca Cola Amatil the maker of the widely consumed Coca Cola brand has been in news for its launch of Coca Cola Life. But we never thought of why it was launched and the strategy of the management behind the launch of such a product.

The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company. Coca-Cola began in 1886 by Atlanta pharmacist Dr. John S. Pemberton in which he created a flavoured syrup and mixed it with carbonated water. To date, Coca-Cola is the company’s most popular and biggest-selling soft drink in history, as well as the best-known brand in the world. The company currently features 20 billion-dollar brands such as Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola Zero, POWERADE, Minute Maid, Dasani and so forth. Through the world’s largest beverage distribution system, consumers in 200 countries are able to enjoy these products at a rate of 1.9 billion servings a day. There are currently 4 variants of Coca-Cola available in Malaysia, namely regular Coke, Coca-Cola Light, Coca-Cola Zero and Vanilla Coke.