Critical analysis of a coca cola company and how to improve the competitive advantage of the company.

nIntroduction

nCoca cola brands have enjoyed customers loyalty for more than a centuary. This is because they have continually adapted to the market demands and this have out weighed their competitors such as pepsi company. The brands have featured in every part of the world where we have different cultures , religions and tastes from different kinds of people. This paper critically analysis the life cycle of coca cola products and how their competitive advantages can be improved to meet the needs of the market.

nBack ground information

nAnalysis

nThere are different managers who have done an exemplary job in maintaining the coca cola products in the competitive market demands. One of this leader is Isdell. He isdell came to take over coke leadership, the company had lost faith in itself and the management board had even lost confidence in the recovery of the company. He did a good job by first encouraging and building the morale of the employees. He layed out strategies on how the company could rejuvenate itself to work more efficiently in dealin with markets demand. The management analysed how the market had changed and beverages people were drinking and wen and why they drank those beverages. They designed the plan called manifesto for growth. It is the manifesto for growth which spured the development of coke company to its current status. They decided that coke would produce beverages and will not diversify from them. The company decided to produce no alcoholic beverages that meet customer needs. The company ceo at the time isdell called this strategy revolutionary evolution.

nThe company decision to launch new products helped it to improve and take advantage of the market and its competititors. Coca cola has launched new products with new strange-sounding names e.g Tab energy. This product is a diet energy drink. It has innovated also coca cola blak – coffee coke and full throttle fury that is a citrus –flavored energy drink. These products creates better and robust connection with customer hence increasing the demand for the products. The company competitiveness was better enhanced by better and well financed marketing of the products. It increased it annual spending on marketing to help boost the sales. Again the company was able to take more risks therefore it was ready for failure or success.

nFor a long period of time coke had defiantly and strongly rooted in its past. It held on its belief that its products were good than anybodys else. It concentrated on the phrase; “Make cola concentrate for pennies, then sell it for dollars through a global bottling system to a mass market that still pretty much drank what it saw on TV.” However the market changed and bottled water was introduced into the market. Coca cola company was not able to adapt to the market changes. It was not able to play well in soft drinks, energy drinks and coffee describing them as low-volume distractors. This helped it arch rival pepsi to take the charge and it got the road map. Matthew Reilly of Morningstar, an analyst, said ironically, “Coke wasn’t even a player in energy drinks–and it was the original energy drink.”

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nThat left Coke with one of the world’s most powerful brands when big brands are boring. It takes a lot more than Coke With Lime to impress the video iPod generation. They want Izzes and Starbucks and Red Bulls. They want choice, not a company telling them “Father knows best.” That came across loud and clear in the annual meeting, as students from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Carleton University in Ottawa spoke out on matters ranging from labor violence in Colombia to Coke’s water use in India to–get this–exclusive contracts on college campuses. “Students are telling us they do not like contracts that make it so that the only beverage they have on campus is Coca-Cola,” said a student organizer from Carleton. “Let me tell you, instead of breeding a future generation wanting to drink Coca-Cola, what you are doing is forcing students to move away from Coke.”

nCoke has been off track for nearly a decade. The unexpected death of CEO Goizueta in October 1997 sent the company into a tailspin. The board meddled, installing two unsuccessful CEOs before Isdell. Politics festered; talent fled or got the boot. The company settled charges of channel stuffing to prop up earnings. Meanwhile Pepsi took off: In the past five years its stock has risen more than a third, to $58 a share.

nIn an interview days after the annual meeting, Isdell said, “I don’t believe we’ve done more in the past than dabble outside carbonated soft drinks. We have not been able to think creatively enough” about sodas themselves. “We’ve often chased volume to the detriment of the business.” Now his team is looking at sodas as potential “carriers of health and wellness,” searching for new, natural sweeteners, and trying to convince Coke and its bottlers that they can distribute 1,000 brands and packages when they think they can handle only 200.