5.2 Strategic Plan Draft

Strategic Themes for Coca Cola Company:

The Coca-Cola Brand is recognized for its communications experience, and the company has consistently pursued a great marketing approach that has been accountable for the company's growth for over a century. The name or mark of Coca-Cola is its main strength. It took a lot of hard work and a solid approach to building the well-known brand. Aside from that, Coca-Cola has used a variety of tactics over the years to gain a competitive edge by using its technological strengths (Tunaiji, 2019). Strategic themes for Coca Cola Company are:

1. Strategic Tactics:

a. Marketing strategies:

A product is a pledge of gratification, strong reputation, increases allegiance, and ensures consistency and quality (Porter, 2008). A number of businesses worldwide have created a brand as powerful as Coca-Cola. The organization has utilized its promotional tools to develop a well-known brand which has become the company's most important viable advantage over the world. This company has been efficient in generating product faithfulness for its customers. This is the outcome of long-term publicizing campaigns that began in the early twentieth century. Coca-Cola has used cutting-edge marketing tactics since the days of Candler and Robert Woodruff. In addition to standard ads in newspapers and on billboards, Coca-Cola concentrated on corporations, schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions, which boosted revenues while sponsoring the name of the brand.

b. Glocal strategies:

Coca-Cola utilized its corporate capabilities to implement a glocal approach, which involves a combination of local and central promotion roles to maximize marketing and delivery efficacy. Coca-Cola retains a clear worldwide identity while incorporating local concepts into promotions to ensure that the branded picture remains in synchronization with local culture using these strategies.

c. New product introduction strategies:

Coca-cola uses new approaches for the development of new products. Coca-Cola has always tended to take care of consumer desires and design its offerings accordingly, rather than taking an internal solution. The practice of inventorying internal properties and resources and leveraging them to manufacture everything that consumers can purchase. The organization either launches new products or attains different companies that manufacture the appropriate product. This is important for competing in an evolving environment and changing the product range to satisfy the demands of consumers.

2. Communication Strategy:

The organization utilizes every possible channel for advertisements and it is at forefront of technological development for it (Vrontis, 2003). The radio is one of the oldest types of advertisement medium, and with the invention of TV, this organization has become one of the medium's first major marketers. Coca-Cola is always presented as a pleasant and refreshing beverage. Many popular ads, such as "Have a Coke and smile" and "The Coke adds life" in the 1970s, "Coke is it!" and "can't beat the feeling" in the 1980s, "can't beat the real thing" in the 1990s, "always living" in the 2000s, "Life tastes good" in 2001, "Make It Real” in 2005, “the Coke side of life" in 2006, "Open Happiness" in 2009 till 2015, "Taste the Feeling" in 2016, "another new look of the DietCoke, words get smaller with Coke and Coke-Zero-Sugar" in 2018, and "Together Tastes Better and Be Open Like Never Before" in 2020, were successfully introduced by the Brand. The organization sponsors big athletic competitions worldwide and recruits well-known athletes for the promotion of the brand. Top celebrities and supermodels are also employed as brand ambassadors by the firm. The organization still presents itself as the best and has the best goods on the market. With the emergence of the internet, the organization started to advertise digitally in order to communicate with the online community.

3. Distribution Strategy:

Coca-Cola has established a worldwide distribution network. It implements two distribution strategies:

· Direct selling: Through this process, Coca-Cola supplies a variety of items to vendors. These vendors may be cinema hauls, restaurants, retail stores, and many more. To supply the goods, the company uses its own cars. Direct sales account for a limited portion of total income.

· Indirect selling: This channel produces the bulk of sales. Coca-Cola forms partnerships with different dealer companies. The corporation provides merchandise to these manufacturers, who then sell them to retailers.

Items are moved from bottling plants to major distributors in the standard model. The goods are then distributed to dealers or smaller outlets by these distributors. In the remote areas or areas with sparse or less population, a small dealer node is added. The stock is then distributed to consumers through small dealers (Ahmed et al. 2016). Simultaneously, the Company has exclusive arrangements with large retailers like Wal-Mart.

In order to help African countries prosper, the Coca-Cola Company has implemented a revolutionary distribution mechanism. According to the report organization.

“Our innovative distribution model helps the Coca-Cola system to create partnerships with small businesses, generating economic opportunities and wealth generation at the community level in emerging markets,” according to the company's report. These micro delivery companies, also familiar as Manual Distribution Centers (MDCs), are operated by modest businesspersons in their communities who hire local people to distribute our goods to small vendors in their communities. They usually hit customers in densely populated urban areas in developed countries where conventional automobile distribution is impractical.”

MDCs have been developed as part of a UNDP-led initiative (United Nations Development Programme). This model ensures that miscellaneous products of this company are available in hard-to-reach areas.

Strategic Objectives of Coca Cola Company:

It is a genuinely multinational corporation that is operational in many countries. The most important competitive advantage of this organization derives from its solid reputation, which has been developed consistently for more than 125 years. In addition to standard ads on billboards and in newspapers, Coca-Cola concentrated on corporations, hospitals, and schools, which boosted revenues while promoting the brand name.

Coca-cola Company has a certain number of strategic objectives to meet the strategic themes mentioned above, i.e., strategic tactics (in terms of strategic strategies, Glocal strategies, and strategies for the introduction of new products), communication, and distributing strategies. With the implementation of the above strategic themes, Coca-Cola can compete with its comparative competitor i.e., "Pepsi" and is known to be the world's most famous beverage company. Coca-Cola can do this by taking care of various areas around the world with more variety of products to attain and increase their popularity. All three mentioned strategic themes play a vital role in the development of this company. And Review and modification of the company's strategic objectives and themes can also help this organization to boost its reputation worldwide.

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