MKTG3003 Creating and Managing Brands: Coca Cola Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : MKTG3003
• University : Macquarie University My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : Brand management

Marketing Strategy 

Executive Summary of Coca Cola

The research focuses on the branding aspect of Coca Cola which is one of the leading pioneers in the beverage market. The various aspects of brand stratification such as brand elements, brand identity, brand symbol and brand slogan has been discussed in the study for finding out more details. The marketing mix strategy has been inducted for finding out the present marketing strata for the products of Coca Cola. It has set the base for finding out the rate of development that is happening with the products of Coca Cola.

Target market analysis has been done in the study for finding out the focused group of customers who are most viable to buy the products of Coca Cola. Accordingly their intervention is valued highly for enhancing the value of sales. The factors affecting brand awareness and brand loyalty has been discussed in the study in which the focus has been provided on customer likelihood.

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Introduction to the Coca Cola Company and Coca Cola.

Brand elements.

Brand name or identity.

Brand symbol

Brand slogan.

Marketing programs.

Marketing mix.

Target market analysis.

Positioning strategy.

Sources of the brand equity.

Brand awareness.

Brand image and loyalty.

Evaluation of threats to brand equity.

Recommendations.

Conclusion.

References.

Introduction to Branding 

Branding is an important part of marketing that is necessary for the organizations to identify the demand of the customers and fulfil their expressions by creating a public relation. The marketing department of an organisation utilises the resources to brand their products to make the consumers aware of their products and support their purchasing decisions through regular communication and integration. The present report analyses the brand elements, awareness and brand equity of Coca Cola of The Coca Cola Company in Australian market. 4Ps of marketing mix, target market and positioning analysis for the company is also evaluated in this report.

Introduction to the Coca Cola Company and Coca Cola

The Coca Cola Company is a multinational company of America that is manufacturers and retailers of soft drink products. Headquarter of the company is Georgia, United States. Coca Cola Amatil is a bottler and distributor of The Coca Cola Company in Australia. The operating income of The Coca Cola Company has been US$8.70 billion in 2018 along with US$31.85 billion of revenue. However, Coca Cola Amatil has obtained a net profit after tax of $388.3 million (Ccamatil.com, 2020). Coca Cola is a type of coke or soft drink that was launched in Australia in 1938 and 4.6 millions of Australians drink it. The company creates an economic opportunity for the Australian labourers that contributes $3.5 billion to Australian economy every year.

Brand Elements

Brand elements consist of some aspects such as brand image, brand identity, brand name, brand personality, brand equity, communication, and positioning and brand experiences. Coca Cola incorporates different marketing strategies like brand establishment, core competencies, customer relationship, enhancement of process and financial efficiency and market segmentation. Main brand elements of Coca Cola are logo, symbols, URLs, spokesperson, slogans, signage, packages and jingles. Defensive marketing is observed in case of Coca Cola in terms of bottle design and promoting their products and logo. “One brand” architecture strategy is followed for Coca Cola in Australia in which the company focuses on creating stronger master brands by uniting the sub brands (Trulydeeply.com.au, 2017).

Brand Name or Identity of Coca Cola

The brand name of Coca Cola becomes a famous brand name. The product establishes an unmatched portfolio of beverages. The product has completed more than 80 years in Australia. There are 165 drinks and 25 brands of Coca Cola Company and the Coca Cola brand is still in the highest position than other Coca Cola products like diet coke, coke lime, Coca Cola no sugar. The classic Coca Cola remains unchanged due to its tastes and design. This carbonated soft drink dominates the soft drink market throughout the world and Australia. Coca-Cola was originated by an Atlanta pharmacist named John S. Pemberton in 1886.

Brand symbol of Coca Cola

The brand is published as a coke bottle and Coca Cola logo has red and white colour. It has been claimed that the idea of red and white colour has come from one of the advertisements of the company that has featured Santa Claus wearing red-and-white suit and holding a Coke bottle in the 1931 Christmas campaign. As per the Coca Cola company, red is symbolised as strengths, energy, love and passion whereas white is symbol of peace, youth, innocence and purity (Cocacolacompany.com, 2020). The company begins promoting their logo and keeps Coke bottles as an icon even after replacing glass with plastic. A curvy script and roll-off-the-tongue name is also used as their signet logo.

Figure 1: Brand logo of Coca Cola

(Source: Cocacolacompany.com, 2020)

Brand Slogan of Coca Cola

The company has introduced a brand slogan namely “Taste the Feeling” in the first global marketing campaign in the last seven years. Director of Heritage Communications of The Coca-Cola Company, Ted Ryan has reflected creative campaigns and taglines for the customers. First advertisement of Coca Cola is featured as “Delicious and Refreshing” Other slogans of the company has been “The Pause That Refreshes'', “Good to the Last Drop,” “Thirst Knows No Season”, “Be Really Refreshed'' (Cocacolacompany.com, 2020). A jingle, “Things Go Better with Coke'' is used to promote the brand of Coca Cola. The company has also hired Creative Artists Agency to develop advertisements for Coca Cola based on a slogan “Always Coca-Cola” to improve brand image and attract customers.

Marketing Programs of Coca Cola

Marketing mix 

Product

Coca Cola has a large range of products that has nearly 3,900 beverage variants. The Coca Cola family products that are sold in Australia are Coca Cola, Coca Cola Zero, Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Mount Franklin, Fuze tea, Kirks, Spring, Lift and others by Coca Cola Australia (Coca-cola.com.au, 2020). Coca Cola is the most popular and highest selling soft drink in all time throughout the world and Australia. Core product Coke has original ingredients like Coca leaves and Kola nuts that were introduced in 1886. The product has 140 Calories and 39 gram carbs per 360mL. It includes guarana and caffeine for providing extra energy. There are Coca Cola Company products that belong to the low or no sugar drink and no calorie category.

Figure 2: Coca Cola market percentage higher than other products

(Source: Coca-cola.com.au, 2020)

Price

The soft drink market of Australia is saturated with competitive brands like PepsiCo, Carabao Energy, Nestle, Asahi Beverages, Berts Soft Drinks, Schweppes, Frezco Beverages Ltd and others. Therefore, pricing is an important factor for the decision making of consumers. The company follows price discrimination strategy and sets the pricing strategy based on the pricing of competitors. However it is identified that the cost of Coca Cola is higher in Australia than other soft drinks. Pricing strategy of Coca Cola focuses more on driving brand loyalty.

Place

Coca Cola has an extensive beverage distribution system with retail outlets, petrol stations and corner stores in different places of Australia. The product is sold in all cities of Australia like NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Richards. A $165 million plant of Coca-Cola Amatil in Richards and Queensland manufacture 90 million unit cases of drinks for national merit and export (Cocacolacompany.com, 2020).

Promotion

This soft drink brand spends a large amount for advertising and promotion to increase sales and revenue. It has been noticed that marketing expenditure of the company has grown to $4.1 billion. The company utilises traditional and digital channels for promoting their products. The company has more than 1250 promotional videos of Coca Cola on social media like YouTube. The company has launched the “Taste the Feeling” campaign in 2016 by using all their brands. Coca Cola Australia has launched an integrated marketing campaign “Share A Coke” that provides an opportunity to every Australian to put their name to the coke bottle to attract a large number of customers (Adnews.com.au, 2020). The company also uses digital out-of-home, large format billboards, and online video and jingles to promote their brand and enhance brand awareness.

Target Market Analysis

It is identified from brand campaigns of Coca Cola that the company only follows demographic market segmentation in which the company mainly focuses on age of the people for promoting their products. Target audience of the company mainly are the young generation and segmentation is not done by gender in Australia. As Coca Cola is present in more than 200 countries, a large geographic area is covered by the company, but the customers are not divided with geographic segmentation. Psychographic market segmentation is also adopted by Coca Cola in which they segment customers as per their lifestyle and health consciousness in case of selling diet coke or Coca Cola with no sugar (Lieven, 2018).

Positioning Strategy

Coca Cola distinguishes their products from their closest competitor PepsiCo by incorporating a large number of products and integration of a huge number of brands to bring tasty products. It has been identified that 30% of Australians prefer Coca Cola than other brands as well as 46% of Australians prefer core Coke more than other sugar free variants and fruit juice of the company (Canstarblue.com.au, 2020). Therefore, a consistency in market position has been held by the company that helps the company to bring innovation in products and increase the market. It has been identified that Coca Cola has 48.6% of market share whereas PepsiCo has 20.5% market share in the market. However, it is identified that the revenue of PepsiCo is higher than Coca Cola.

Figure 3: Market share of Coca Cola and PepsiCo

(Source: Canstarblue.com.au, 2020)

Sources of The Brand Equity

Brand Awareness

Brand personality of Coca Cola reflects its brand positioning and this soft drink brand is accurate competition of excitement and sincerity. Most branding and advertising of Coca Cola is done through social media advertisements and campaigns like “Shake A Coke ''. It has relaunched 22 drinks in the Australian market since 2015 and the company focuses on the products with less sugar and shifting its portfolio to bring more low sugar drinks to enhance brand image and awareness (Williams & Williams, 2017). According to a survey of “The Sydney Morning herald” Coca Cola is best-selling carbonated soft drink in Australia which accounts for more than 17% sales. The company uses iconic glass logo and coke campaigns to raise awareness among young audiences and social engagement is higher for Coca Cola than PepsiCo that improves brand awareness.

Figure 4: Social index and brand awareness of Coca Cola and PepsiCo

(Source: Williams & Williams, 2017)

Brand Image and Loyalty

The company has a positive brand image in Australia due to effective marketing campaigns, low calorie products, various floors in the drink and innovative packaging designs. The company trades on community and satisfying the taste of consumers to maintain customer loyalty. Net profit of Coca Cola Amatil has risen 6.3% to $168 million in 2019 and Coca Cola has contributed $1.22 billion of revenue (Gray, 2019). It ensures that the company has a high brand image and loyalty that enhances their sales by 10%. However, there are limited-edition flavours of Coca Cola in Australia and the company focuses on delivering innovative flavour combinations with great-tasting to the consumers to enhance the customer base and brand loyalty.

Evaluation of Threats to Brand Equity

The competitive positioning strategy for Coca Cola has forced it to adjust with its quality specifications. The competition in the present market in the beverage industry has genuinely forced Coca Cola to enhance its value premium incrementing strategy. However, it has not been able to uplift its value premium strategy due to mismanagement of ordeals. Owing to this factor, the company has lost customer loyalty leading to decrement in the number of sales valuation of Coca Cola products (Hultén, 2017). In Australia, the customers treat the brands as assets and therefore it has become very difficult for the management unit of Coca Cola to balance its multiple branded products. Consequently, the customers have been seriously disappointed in this regard owing to decrement of position in the beverages market in Australia.

It has also been seen that Coca Cola has been facing imminent challenges to maintain the efficacy of its products owing to multiple brands strategy. Brand development has also been extremely difficult for Coca Cola due to manifesting brand equity. The mismanagement of brand development has caused the company serious problems in maintaining the requirements of their customers. As a result, Coca Cola has lost its variability for the customers in the year 2019 when it has not been reported as the first order beverage company.

Recommendations on Coca Cola

• Coca Cola needs to identify the points of strengths in brand equity of its competitors in Australia like PepsiCo. It would help the company to develop strategies for enhancing the value premium of its products.
• Coca Cola also needs to improve its brand management strategy and make usage of umbrella strategy of branding where it can develop the base for selling multiple brands.
• Coca Cola needs to review and monitor the pricing strategy which is preferred by the customers of Australia.
• Coca Cola needs to focus more on advertising strategy so that it can measure the selling capacity of its products.

Conclusion on Coca Cola

In conclusion, Coke or normal Coca Cola of The Coca Cola Company has a high brand image and loyalty in the Australian market. The company has obtained a higher market position than the closest competitor, PepsiCo due to their effective marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. It enhances their brand awareness in Australia as well as increases sales and profit of the company. The company uses 4Ps of marketing mix to determine their current position and take pricing strategies after evaluating pricing strategies of competitors and promote their products through social and traditional media to reach a large number of customers.

References for Coca Cola

Adnews.com.au (2020). Coca-Cola Australia embraces diversity with re-launch of Share A Coke - AdNews. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.adnews.com.au/news/coca-cola-australia-embraces-diversity-with-re-launch-of-share-a-coke

Canstarblue.com.au (2020). Which Soft Drink is Top of the Pops for Aussies? – Canstar Blue. Canstar Blue. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.canstarblue.com.au/groceries/australia-favourite-soft-drink/

Ccamatil.com (2020). Annual report 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.ccamatil.com/-/media/Cca/Corporate/Files/Annual-Reports/2019/2018-Annual-Report.ashx

Coca-cola.com.au (2020). Products | Coca-Cola Classic. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.coca-cola.com.au/en/products/coca-cola-classic

Cocacolacompany.com (2020). Coca-Cola in Australia: Our Story. Coca-colacompany.com. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/au/news/who-we-are

Cocacolacompany.com. (2020) Coca-Cola Celebrates 80 years Made in Australia. Coca-colacompany.com. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/au/media-centre/media-releases/coca-cola-celebrates-80-years-made-in-australia

Cocacolacompany.com (2020). Coca-Cola Slogans through the Years. Coca-colacompany.com. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/au/news/coca-cola-slogans-through-the-years

Coca-colacompany.com. (2020). Sustainable Packaging | The Coca-Cola Company. Coca-colacompany.com. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainable-business/packaging-sustainability

Gray, D. (2019). Diet and no-sugar Coke sales rising, Canadian Club goes 'gangbusters'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/coca-cola-amatil-declares-a-special-dividend-as-statutory-profit-rises-20190821-p52jhl.html

Hultén, B. (2017). Branding by the five senses: A sensory branding framework. Journal of Brand Strategy, 6(3), 281-292. 

Lieven, T. (2018). Global Branding with Brand Gender and Brand Equity. In Brand Gender (pp. 33-61). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Retrieved 8 May 2020 from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60219-6_3

Trulydeeply.com.au (2017). Coca Cola 'one brand' architecture comes to Australia | Truly Deeply - Brand Agency Melbourne. Truly Deeply - Brand Agency Melbourne. Retrieved 8 May 2020, from https://www.trulydeeply.com.au/2017/02/coca-cola-one-brand-architecture-australia/

Williams, R. L., & Williams, H. A. (2017). Origins of Today’s Marketing and Branding Strategies. In Vintage Marketing Differentiation (pp. 1-4). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Retrieved 8 May 2020 from https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-38721-9_1

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