Comparison of Coca Colas Marketing Campaign - Case Study Example

Comparison of Coca Cola’s Marketing Campaign Comparison of Coca Cola’s Marketing Campaign John Smith Pemberton, founder of Coca Cola was a druggist, who planned on inventing a medicine; but little did he know that his formulation would emerge to become the world’s most popular drinks of all time. The drink named Coca Cola gained rapid success due to the marketing capabilities of Chandler, who developed systems for distribution of the product throughout the country. In a mere span of 30 years coca cola gained success and became the most acknowledged brand of America. The drink initially was just syrup mixed with soda that gave the product its bubbly appearance. Coca Cola was marketed as a soft drink; however, one drawback that the product faced in its initial stages was the inclusion of cocaine in the formula. The company succeeded in completely removing cocaine and then replaced it with coca leaves which are still used as of now. In 1909, Coca Cola went global and started exporting its products to other countries of the world such as UK, Mexico and Belgium etc. Today, almost after years and years of manufacturing and selling, Coca Cola is sold all over the world and is considered the greatest soft drink company (Smith, n.d.). The secret behind Coca Cola’s prosperity is the excellent marketing strategies and creativity behind its advertisements. Coca Cola also has a variety of 2400 drinks ranging from fruit juices to energy drinks, all of different flavors and types (Bodden, 2009). Some of the products of coca cola include Fanta, Sprite, Minute maid, Schweppes, powerade and many more (The Coca-Cola Company, 2015). The company that we see today is because of the policies that are focused towards the strategic management and the mergers that the company made with other top notch brands like Monster Beverage Corporation. A successful cross cultural marketing has also played a vital role towards the success of Coca Cola. In this essay, we will argue about how an international brand launches local and international marketing campaigns, what these campaigns are based on and how they differ from one culture to the other. Therefore, in this essay Coca Cola’s marketing strategies in two different countries will be compared. Culture maybe referred to as a way of living that a group of people follow with minute alterations. The word culture itself can be used in multiple ways and everyone perceives it based on their own thinking. Culture is the combination of knowledge, beliefs, art, morale, laws, customs and traditions and any other manners that the Human has procured by being a member of a society. When a person becomes a part of an organization, he first observes and leans about the artifacts of that place. Artifacts include the way people talk to each other, how they get dressed, and their demeanor etc. Then the individual analyzes the reason as to why others behave in that way and for this the person has to observe the values revolving around the behavior of others. But to really understand a culture, one has to observe the underlying assumption which are invisible to the naked eye and are hence felt or perceived. Culture is not inborn but is learned with time. When a person interacts with others and gets social, that is when a culture is transmitted among a group of people, it is acquired through the continuous process of trial and error and hence it changes with the passage of time (Spencer Oatey, 2012). Edard T. Hall in 1976 wrote about the two different types of cultures in his book Beyond Culture. According to him there are two types of cultures; High Context and low context cultures. High context cultures are those in which there is a large network of people who are linked to each other, these may be in the form of family, friends, close relatives, colleagues etc. This type of culture is usually seen in Asia whereas the High Context culture like those of the West tend to separate their day to day activities and their work and personal lives are usually separate. In high context cultures information is transmitted form of physical context whereas is low context cultures, people rely more on background information of the person. Low context cultures require crystal clear messages that do not need elaboration whereas in high context cultures there is no such emphasis on the message being communicated. Hofstede and de Mooji have stated that the difference in communication between such countries is important for designing marketing and advertising strategies (Hall, 1976). The most pronounced work based on classification of cultures was written by Gert Hofstede and hence the theory is named Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension. On the basis of Hofstede’s cultural dimension, there are five dimensions within a culture; individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, Masculinity-femininity, long term/short term orientation. In this essay Coca Cola’s marketing strategies in two countries will be compared; UK and Australia. These countries have been chosen because when the two countries were compared based on their cultural differences using the Hofstedes method, it will be shown that the power distance, individualism, indulgence were almost similar in both of these countries, Crucially, masculinity was higher in United Kingdom, than Australia. If we study about these differences in detail we will observe that both of the countries lie at an equal ratio of power distance which is 35 for the UK and 36 for Australia. The power distance in both the countries is pretty low which shows that there is very less inequality among the people and there is no segregation in these cultures (Hofstede, 2001). The second characteristic is individualism, which signifies the level of interdependence among individuals of a country. Individualism holds great importance and signifies the rate of economic development of a country. Countries with high individualism have a greater prospect of economic development. Furthermore, countries with high individualism portray justice and gives same rights to all (Andrews.edu, n.d.). Both of the countries have a high ratio of individualism which means that both Australia and the UK have people who look after themselves and do not rely on others. In such cultures hiring and firing is based on merit of proof of service. The third trait is masculinity; Masculinity refers to the competition within a culture. The masculinity scores of both these countries are high which makes these societies masculine; this means the concept of competition in work, home or school. The next characteristic is uncertainty avoidance which describes how the population deals with the unknown. The UK has a ratio of 35 which is pretty low and shows that the people of UK are very happy waking up not knowing what is going to happen tomorrow but this is not favorable for work results whereas Australia score of Uncertainty avoidance is 51 which is intermediate. The second last dimension is long term orientation which portrays as to how a society links the past with the present and the future, UK has an intermediate score of 51 whereas Australia scored 21 which showed that the people living in Australia have a normal culture and have great power over establishing and realizing the truth. The last trait is indulgence, or in other words the ability to socialize. United Kingdom has a staggering score of 69 which shows that the people of Britain are more socially inclined and possess an optimistic attitude towards things. Australia scored 71 which are higher than the UK which shows that they are socially much better than the Britishers. The Australians enjoy their free time, enjoy their life and spend money at their will (Geert-hofstede.com, n.d.). This was the only difference in the entire campaign. Analyses of other marketing strategies also do not point towards a definitive difference in the strategy because both the countries have similar cultures with minor differences of living. Coca Cola’s mission statement “Think locally, Act globally” clearly describes the cross cultural marketing strategy that Coke is known for (Aswathappa and Dash, 2008). For this it was necessary for the company to produce eye catching and appealing marketing strategies which gathered attention of the people of all age’s mostly young adults and teenagers who make up the greater part of the target market of Coca Cola. The advertising campaigns show that the brand, coca cola itself is more popular which is why there is a wider range of products in the UK and coca cola has many affiliations with the sports played in Britain which has helped it spread throughout the country. But Coca cola in Australia doesn’t find much sponsorships and programs. Marketing consists of certain processes which start with the sender, encoding, message, medium, decoding this refers to semiotics, receiver, noise and then finally feedback. The sender is the person who conveys the message, Encoding is the transformation of thoughts into words, Message is the information being sent, Medium is the channel through which message is being sent, Decoding is when the message is transformed to its original form, receiver is the person who perceives the message, noise is the disturbance that does not allow proper message to be conveyed and feedback is the response made by the receiver (Chand, 2015). The advertisement campaigns of Coca Cola mainly rely on television ads and the target groups are all ages of people. Coca cola has been successful in conducting an international communication strategy. As a result of this, they were able to achieve investment for large scale production and for research and development. Coca cola is popular because of their event based marketing. The share a coke ad campaign was popular and resulted in a huge demand for coke (Paul and Kapoor, 2012). The marketing campaign of coca cola is not for children under 12 years of age and coca cola will not link itself to any schools for marketing. Coca cola has also started to market through online resources and has linked marketing practitioners to learn what practice is the best and how to solve the issues that may or may not occur. Coca cola also communicates with its consumers to learn what they want so that they deliver the best and then achieve the greatest heights (Coca-Cola GB, 2015). Coca cola depends upon three basic principles to achieve its target market; acceptability among the public, the ability for the people to afford the beverage and lastly making sure that Coca Cola is available anywhere and everywhere. Coca cola has created large and wide distribution networks which ensure that the products are available everywhere. The company has the most extensive manufacturing system in the world (Businesscasestudies.co.uk, 2015) Bibliography Smith, A. (n.d.). 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International human resource management. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Pub. Chand, S. (2015). The 8 Basic Process of Marketing Communication in International Promotion. [online] Yourarticlelibrary.com. Available at: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/international-marketing/the-8-basic-process-of-marketing-communication-in-international-promotion/5948/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2015]. Paul, J. and Kapoor, R. (2012). International marketing. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Coca-Cola GB, (2015). Responsible Marketing Strategies : About Us. [online] Available at: http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/about-us/responsible-marketing.html [Accessed 6 Mar. 2015]. Businesscasestudies.co.uk, (2015). Marketing strategy - Within an arms reach of desire - Coca-Cola Great Britain | Coca-Cola Great Britain case studies and information | Business Case Studies. [online] Available at: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/coca-cola-great-britain/within-an-arms-reach-of-desire/marketing-strategy.html#axzz3TdtiiVk4 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2015]. Read More