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The organization of interest is the Coca-Cola Company. Invented in 1886, the Coca Cola Company deals with beverage brands such as Coca–Cola Zero, Coke, Dasani, Fanta, Sprite, Minute maid, vitamin water, gold peak, PowerAde, Del Valle, and Georgia. Coca-Cola is a multinational company that operates across all the continents and almost all countries except North Korea and Cuba (Banutu-Gomez, 2012). Over the decades, the company has experienced rapid growth as a result of a vast client base resulting from broader market coverage.
The coca-cola company is a differentiator in the market, not only through its name but also its differentiation strategy. The company’s brand and the unique signature ‘Coca-Cola’ has enabled it to have a distinct difference between its products and those of the competitors. The company’s differentiation strategy is for product development and provision of services with unique attributes and features. Value addition in the company’s product features assists the company is offering a special or unique price for it (Hays, 2005). For instance, the cost of buying mineral water is cheaper for customers compared to that of vitamin water. This pricing strategy helps the company to cover the production costs unrecovered from the routine priced products. Besides, Coca-Cola is a leading differentiator in the market. This is through spending more than twenty percent (20%) of its advertising budget on differentiating its products. The following standards have helped the company to be a leading differentiator in the market. They are; the communication of product strength as perceived by the end-users, corporate reputation for quality and innovation, and a symbol for enjoying and have fun.
Many resources have fueled Coca-Cola’s outstanding performance across the world. According to Banutu-Gomez (2012), the resources behind cocoa coca’s extemporal performance in business include its supply chain, marketing, the bottling and distribution network, global presence, human resources, and product range quality. These resources have supported the company in acquiring new business territories and have sustained its dominance in over two hundred countries worldwide. Currently, coca cola’s has one of the best supply chain functions in the world. The company’s successful global manufacturing and distribution are associated with its strong supply chain. The company is always concerned with its supply chain system, which keeps regularly updating, thus maintaining its high standard. The organization has ensured that its supply chain management staff has adhered to the rules of the established code of business conduct (Mazur and Mazur-Małek 2018).
Marketing is one of the influential resources behind cola’s business expansion and success. The marketing department has managed to help the company in sales and revenue over the decades. Over the years, the company has utilized both traditional and modern or digital marketing techniques. Also, Coca-Cola is well-understood with its corporate social responsibility (CSR) in societies. Despite being in business, the company is associated with many CSR practices that have touched lives. The strategy has inspired many people to love and maintain their loyalty to the brand (Banutu-Gomez, 2012).
The company’s large bottling and distribution network is another influential resource in its outstanding performance. The system consists of distributors, independent bottling partners, retailers, wholesalers, and company-owned. Through this stable network, the firm can distribute its new and existing products. In 2018, the company sold over twenty-nine billion unit cases of beverages. About 40% of these sales were through the company’s bottling and distribution partners.
Human resources management is another critical resource in Coca-Cola’s competitive advantage. Managing people strategically is a crucial function played by coca cola’s human resource managers. According to Mazur and Mazur-Małek (2018), in 2018, coca-cola limited hired more than sixty thousand people, of which eleven thousand were from the United States. Apart from good salaries, the employees of the company enjoy huge benefits such as leave, paternity, maternity, and hardship allowances (O’Brien, and Kessler, 2014). The Global Employer: The Labor Relations and Collective Agreements Issue. However, the company has made sure that its staff is well-motivated by providing both financial and nonfinancial incentives. The employees of Coca-Cola are among the well and regularly trained personnel in the world. In 2018, Coca-Cola was ranked number 28 among the best employers in the world (Mazur and Mazur-Małek, 2018).
Coca-Cola’s product range has also boosted its competitive advantage to a great extent. The secret behind Coca-Cola’s product range quality is to address varying consumer needs. For instance, some consumers may like sugary beverages like Fanta, while others may prefer sugarless drinks such as coke zero and mineral water. This ideally depends on the consumer’s preferences in terms of calorie intake. Some of the coca colas assorted drinks include; water, sports drinks, sports drinks, juice, dairy, tea, and coffee.
To attain operational excellence, the Coca-Cola Company has taken some actions which have helped it this far. The first action is the improvement of the company’s packaging architecture. Despite a reduced intake of calories amongst its customers, the company has recorded increased sales of its sparkling drinks. The increased sales are a result of the company’s recent shift to smaller packaging, such as the 7.5-oz mini-cans (Sharma, A., 2020).
The second action is the adoption of the ‘lift and shift’ model of brand transportation across borders. The third and last action is the recent utilization of the consumer-staples titan concept. Through this concept, the company has managed to double the production and distribution of zero sugar cola beverages in North America (Sharma, A., 2020). This came after the realization that the quantities of sugar intake among the American population were declining.
References
Hays, C. L. (2005). The real thing: Truth and power at the Coca-Cola Company. Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Banutu-Gomez, M. B. (2012). Coca-Cola: International business strategy for globalization. The Business & Management Review, 3(1), 155.
Mazur, B., & Mazur-Małek, M. (2018). Corporate Wellness: The Case of Coca-Cola Poland Company. International Journal of Contemporary Management, 2018(Numer 17 (2)), 97-110.
O’Brien, P. J., & Kessler, J. H. (2014). The Global Employer: The Labor Relations and Collective Agreements Issue.
Sharma, A., 2020. 3 Trends Behind Coca-Cola’s Surprisingly Strong Earnings Report | The Motley Fool. [online] The Motley Fool. Available at: <https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/30/3-trends-behind-coca-colas-surprisingly-strong-ear.aspx> [Accessed 10 April 2020].