Coca Cola Marketing Mix Strategy

1.0 Marketing Mix Strategies The marketing mix is a crucial tool to help understand what the product or service can offer and how to plan for a successful product offering (Martin, 2014). The elements in traditional marketing mix involve price, promotion, product and place (distribution).

1.1 Price

Although Coca-Cola is already a leader in India soft drink industry, it still facing an intensely viral. Thus, Coca-Cola is always maintain the price of its product to be affordable to retain its customers (Neil Kokemuller, n.d.). Coca-Cola is so successful in India because it manages to capture the price-sensitive of customer in India by merging the market with an affordability strategy and spends a lot on advertising and manufacturing. In 2002,

Although Coca-Cola biggest competitor, PepsiCo. has an almost similar product as its product, but it still has some differences in taste (Dawar, 2014). In nutritional content, Pepsi has slightly more sugar, calories, and caffeine. Coke has slightly more sodium (Lubin, 2012). Besides, Coca-Cola is also successful due to its supply chain function. Supply chain can be refer as the process of transferring the goods or services from suppliers to the final customers. “We ensure that every link in the chain stretching from bottler to consumer is working together. We cover every aspect of supply from Procurement and Manufacturing (including Quality, Environment, Safety & Health), to Engineering and Logistics.” (Coca-Cola Company, 2013) Moreover, the successful of Coca-Cola is also due to its innovation. For an example, Coca-Cola attracted its customers by introducing some innovative vending machine such as Small World Machine in India, Coke Hug Machine and etc. This innovative strategy not only attract its customers in short term but it made Coca-Cola brand last longer in customer mind and successful deliver “happiness” as their value proposition. Lastly, Coca-Cola’s good customer relationship is also an initiative of successful of its company. Coca-Cola is used to be red as its brand and it bring a value of happiness, but when Coca-Cola introduced Diet Coke in

is not so successful as Coca-Cola but it still be well known with its major product, Pepsi. One of PepsiCo.’s competitive advantage is its variety product line. In 2001, PepsiCo. stated in 38 percent more revenue than Coca-Cola despite it was stated $16 billion sales in soft drinks. This is because besides of compete with Coca-Cola in soft drink market, Pepsi also introduce some snacks and breakfast, such as Quaker Oat, Lay and others (Business Insider, 2012). Secondly, PepsiCo.’s other competitive advantage will be its focus on shareholder returns. PepsiCo currently pays out 55% of its earnings as a dividend to its shareholders (Seghetti, 2012). With a strong bonding with shareholders, PepsiCo. is able to gain a high reputation and directly gain a strong financial support from its shareholders. Thirdly, the competitive strategy toward Cola war is the production. For an example, the consumption of carbonated drink in USA is decreasing significantly due to the increasing in number of obesity. Thus, PepsiCo. is introduced some other products such as water juices, tea and others (Mutiso, 2013). Last but not least, PepsiCo’s also has a competitive advantage in its advertising and understanding about the market. For an example, when the consumption of