Applied Buyer's Behavior in the Coca-cola Company - Case Study Example

Introduction Marketing is an essential aspect in the lifeline of every organization as it’s the only way of expanding the company’s product market and arousing interest of the people on the products. The way to achieve this is through the use of effective advertising. To ensure effective advertising the companies use innovative marketing strategies and narrative with iconic characters to capture a large number of audience. Companies pump millions of dollars in print media, TV, radio, and the internet advertising in a view to promoting the image of the company and its products in general. The major dilemma the companies face is determining the effectiveness of the advertisement campaign is establishing the effectiveness of the choice of campaign they used and the also impact the choice has created as this will imperatively help in the future choices of advertisement campaigns. To achieve the required bottom line in estimating and analyzing the effectiveness of an ad, advertisement campaign evaluation has to be conducted. Ad campaign evaluation involves gathering facts to determine if the customer understood the message conveyed on the ad, the projected features of the product, and how the advertisement influenced the individual’s view of the product. Understanding advertisement Advertising can be classified into two categories: brand building and directional (Fernandez and Rosen, 2000; Lohse and Rosen,2001). Brand building advertising is synonymous with product advertising and is commonly seen in traditional mass media, including TV, radio, magazine, and newspaper. Brand building advertisements tend to be product/service- (or retailer-) oriented with the purpose to establish a positive image and creating demand for a product or service that leads to eventual purchase (Barrow, 1990; Rosenberg, 1995). The communication route is typically one-to-many and is designed to reach a mass audience by using a tactic of .intrusion. aimed at capturing the attention of users. Directional advertising is designed to help potential buyers locate interesting information (Fernandez, 1995). The communication route is typically one-to-one and it is assumed that a potential buyer brings him or herself to ads. Advertising in this case is catering to customers’ needs. The Power of Advertising Companies and the business fraternity believe in the power of advertising, based on thousands of responses received and assessments companies have realised. Advertising has the power to persuade, the power to influence the mind and shape destiny. It has the power to change markets and improve profit margins. Advertising has short-term power (conveying new information, building awareness, enhancing credibility, etc.) and long-term power (conveying brand image, attaching emotional values to the brand, building positive reputation, etc.). The great power of advertising is seldom achieved in practice, but we can’t give up. The potential and the promise are too great. The companies that master the creative guidance and the testing systems to consistently develop and deploy great advertising will own the future and the fortunes that go with it. Great advertising is a cloak of invincibility.  This report aims at analysis the ad campaign of the Coca cola Company to understand its target population, the seasonability of the ad and the campaign message the company is passing to its customers as a basis for evaluating its effectiveness. Company profile The Coca-Cola Company is the leading soft drinks company in the world and was founded by John Smith Pemberton who was a pharmacist based in Atlanta. He prepared a beverage which was later called coca cola by F. M. Robinson as it contained extracts of Coca leaves and Kola nuts. Since its foundation Coca Cola Company has more than 500 brands, led by Coca-Cola which is the most famous brand of all the company’s products. Other beverage brands include Fanta, Sprite, Spa letter, Krest, Novida just but to mention. “Coke Side of Life” campaign Due to slippage in revenue for Coke Classic by 2% in 2005 the company thought of launching an ad campaign to regain the sales of coca Cola. The company strategic planners decided to move away from the traditional ad of sporting and come up with the idea of the “Coke side of life”. The coke side of life campaign targeted people from multicultural background to choose coke as their preferred soft drink or beverage. The main aim of the campaign was to bring coke closer to people by establishing a multi-cultural platform in markets across the world. The ad was grounded on the fact that people make choices each and every moment in life, and the coke side of live campaign encourages people to take the right choices; Coke. The campaign encourages individual to create or select a positive aspect in their real life and take time to reflect and listen to their inner self and live explode the aspect in full colors as illustrated by the figure 1 below Figure 1: the coke side of life ad The diagram above was the main illustration used by the ad. Its basis was that; with Coke one was able to achieve the real feeling the life has to offer. This idea is generated through the multicolor aspect portrayed by the ad. Target Market/Population Coca Cola Company is a multi-national company with its commercial footprint felt across the continental divide. This means that they command a very big population of consumers and potential consumers of their products and most importantly Coke. Due to business slump there was need to increase the effect of products to its consumers. The company had to be specific in which group of consumers they targeted. The company principally needed to increase sales and overall revenue generation but they knew very well that the campaign may focus on the intermediate objectives that make sales and other business objectives easier at the end of the day. The company chose the group perceived to be the largest of the consumer clusters. These were the groups who shared common interest and those with a common background e.g. families, youth, schools and colleges among other groups who are put together based on their occupation, values or social group. As explained by Cathryn Sleight, Marketing Director for Coca‑Cola Great Britain, “The ad is the personification of ‘The Coke Side of Life’ philosophy The Advertisement Message This is very important element advertising. Most adverts however share a common principle components within the message it carries including; The appeal- This is the main idea that is intended to attract the attention of the consumers of the product. ‘Live the coke side of life’ advert message bore an emotional feeling and was intended to create a sense of complete pleasure. Value preposition- The advertising message is always intended to create a pull factor or a reason for customers to be interested with the product which is often means the advert will emphasize the benefits obtained from using the product. Slogan- To help the product establish itself in the consumers mind and distinguish it from the rival products adverts will always have a word or phrase that is repeated over the advertising media. Coca cola Company chose the phrase ‘Live the coke side of life’ This message was the one that was repeated across all the media platforms used. Campaign seasonability Advertisement campaigns are always very expensive venture for any business and more importantly to the business with very large geographical coverage like coca cola. It is imperative for the business to understand the dynamics of the consumers of their products. This will help the planners to appreciate the time which the customers are possibly going to make the buying decisions. Coca cola company being a primarily a soft drink company with products that are well utilized during the summer needed to prepare an ad that needed to be launched and run for the better part of the summer. The company strategist took reasonable time in carrying out a research with prime reason of understanding the consumer patterns in relation to seasonality. They carried out the feasibility study around January and February. The advertisement preliminaries run for two months as a pilot study of the overall project. As the summer approached the company launcherd the advert campaign that run throughout for six months. Advert area coverage Geographical coverage for an advert is very important as it helps the planners to do a proper study of the culture, purchasing power, economic class and the accessibility. Taking this into account, the planners will be able to budget well. Coca Cola Company required an advert that can be used all over the globe with no or very little alteration while using the same philosophy. The diagram below explains the principle image used and the variations with continents. Figure 2 If you take a keen look at these images it is very clear that there was a common concept employed with very little alteration just to appreciate and auger well with the cultures of the target groups Advertising media selection Choice of an advertising media selection is the process of identifying the most cost-effective media to use in order to achieve the required coverage and the number of exposures in a target audience. King et al (1997) observed that it is the advertiser that plays the most powerful role in the media planning process: that of the power of the purse. Later, King et al (2004) concluded that areas that need more empirical research were the roles of advertisers as well as the involvement of the advertiser in the actual media planning process. Presently we find many different companies forming in order to assist advertisers in their marketing communication efforts, and the number is increasing (Soberman, 2005). Examples of such agencies are advertising, media, public relations, web and market research agencies. According to Gronhaug (1972) the degree to which marketing managers determine media decisions beforehand and the briefing that the media selector is given were among the influencing factors on media selection. Coca cola company marketing unit was tasked with partnering with advertising agencies in order to arrive at the best media choice as observed by Grant and McLeod (2007) who have shown that working with a network of influential parties and various types of communication agencies can create complexity and fragmentation. After through deliberation the company marketing unit ended up using the following media platforms to pass the advertisement campaign; internet, Television, Radio, Football club sponsorship, Bill boards, road shows, Tournaments among other platforms. The advertisement campaign took six months with prime principle of regenerating the urge for the beverage manufactured by the company. Some choices were arrived at due to the corporate image it creates among the consumers of the product. Football sponsorship, road shows and tournaments were coupled with corporate social responsibility. This was very crucial as it enabled the company to partner with other companies which helped in reducing the cost for the campaign without compromising with impact intended by the advert. While the above captured the lower and medium income earners and the corporate as well while creating the corporate image of the company, Television and Radio platforms offered an opportunity of capturing even a bigger crowed since the advertisement campaign was being aired during most prime time. It is perceived that an average citizen in almost the entire market can afford to own a Television set or a Radio thus this platform reached as many people as possible. The internet was used due to its effectiveness among the young generation. The effect of Facebook, twitter and other social media and other reasons of internet use not withstanding was seen as the sufficient reasons to reach a bigger population. Compared to traditional media, the Internet provides more capabilities and thus more opportunities for consumers. For example, the Internet based ads can provide higher interactivity than many of the ads carried in traditional media. Also an online ad can be customized easily to better suit a consumer’s needs. Conclusion Advertising business involves people & creative advertising is one that sells through people’s efforts, and appropriate market demand. If you create the healthy environment for creative people with right kind of required information, they can genuinely create great & saleable advertising. Advertising unit or department bond together as a 'team' not as individual, Therefore, creative advertising that actually sells in the market and live a hard impression in mind is the result of 'team work'. In advertising business creativity resulting from great team efforts, effective idea and communicate exactly same to the audience, these are the key factors in successful advertising campaigns. The Advertising agencies and departments in organizations must therefore have hunger for these elements and strive towards achieving them. There are many adverts for different product categories, but how many of them were able to differentiate themselves from other? With creative adverts they can certainly communicate it differently so as to create a distinct brand image in the minds of the consumer,” There is great hunger from consumer’s side they wanted to see things differently and its advertiser’s responsibility to attract and engaged the consumers, they remember and memorize the creative adverts than the product. Marketers need to understand the various dimension of advertising creativity is important. To fully understand creativity, one would need to expose what factors are generally held to comprise it, and these some dimensions could be Novelty, Meaningfulness, Well Craftiness, Positivity, and Humor. Coca cola Company with its diverse product line was able to achieve the intended objectives. The slogan ‘lives the coke side of life’ met through all parameters the described elements of a good advert. The company provided the objectives to the marketing team who carried out a positive research that enabled them develop an all time advert that was able to remain useful in its original form across the continental divide with very minimal change. References Barrow, P. .Does Your Advertising Director Intrude?. Canadian Manager, 15 Spring, 1990, pp. 26-27. Fernandez, K. V. and Rosen, D. L (2000). .The effectiveness of information and color in yellow pages advertising. Journal of Advertising (29:2), 2000, pp. 61-73. Sharma, S. R. (2011). VSRD Internal journal of Business and research. Retrieved November 22, 2012, from www.vsrdjournals.com: http://www.vsrdjournals.com/MBA/Issue/2011_8_August/5_Shubangi_Rajput_Sharma2_Research_Communication_Aug_2011.pdf• www.bandofmidamerica.af.mil. (n.d.). band of mid-america. Retrieved November 22, 2011, from www.bandofmidamerica.af.mil: http://www.bandofmidamerica.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-070626-025.pdf Read More