Competitive Position and Performance of Soft Drinks Industry - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The discussion has provided a clear image of the organizations and their last five years' financial performances. It has evaluated the non-financial performances to assess the future performance of the organizations. The study has provided essential recommendations for organizations to improve their future performance.

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Research background
The soft drink market is the highly growing industry sector of the UK with a 44.8% market share. In comparison to 2013, the overall consumption of different soft drink brands within the UK has witnessed a modest increase of 0.9%. Approximately 48% of consumers in the UK prefer different brands of carbonated soft drinks rather than other beverages. Over 37% of the household of the UK are replacing alcoholic beverages with the carbonated soft drink during their meal time (Ford, 2014). The UK soft drink market consists of wide range of product options such as carbonated drinks, flavoured juices, ready-to-drink beverages, packaged drinking water and energy drinks (British Soft Drink Association. 2014).

The carbonated soft drink (CDS) market possesses the largest portion, i.e. 50.3%, of the UK soft drink industry. The major players of the UK CDS sector include Britvic Plc., Nichols Plc., and A. G. Barr Plc. which own respectively 43%, 2% and 3% of the overall market share by revenue (British Soft Drink Association. 2013).

Though the market consists of a huge number of local organizations, it is still dominated by different international players such as Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo Inc (Steen and Ashurst, 2008). The range of soft drinks on the shelves of retail outlets is rapidly growing which is giving people a wider choice than ever. Therefore, this situation has fuelled fierce competition among local brands to secure a competitive position within the UK market. The strong competition in the market is also influencing the major local players to indulge in different research processes to analyze further development capabilities (Ramanathan and Muyldermans, 2010).

1.2 Importance of the research
The rapid growth in the soft drink market and the increased rate of consumption are attracting various new national as well as international industries to invest in the CSD sector of the UK. ...Download file to see next pages Read More