Coca-Cola Marketing Problem

Please choose any well known company write a survey plan that solves the marketing problem of the company, and Word within 4 pages (excluding title page) 4 pages evaluation of The future of the problem and identification of the problem Decision-making problem definition List of research problems (no limit) O and suggestion of branch hypotheses O Expected Survey Schedule (Simple schedule table

Coca-Cola Marketing Problem

The purpose of the marketing project is to determine some of the most critical marketing problems facing Coca-Cola. The company depends mainly on marketing to ensure that customers know the brands and products that the company offers. As a result, the marketing management and team should implement effective strategies to improve marketing activities and achieve growth. However, the marketing process is sometimes marred with some problem, internal or external, that hinder the company’s effectiveness and success, especially in countering competition. The management should comprehend the problem and implement strategies to address it. A marketing researcher can help the company identify some of the most pressing problems and proposed solutions to improve market performance and competitiveness. Information from a survey will help the company’s marketing leadership address underlying issues to prevent further loss of the market share to competitors, such as Pepsi, and improve its image in the global soft drink industry. Although the company has always experienced the competition challenge, it has never been greater than in the current high-speed, intensely competitive market.

Background

Coca-Cola is one of the well-known multinationals in the world. Over the years, the company has been successful, with maximum control over the soft drink market globally. However, the company has a marketing challenge that the management should address to improve its market position and become more competitive even as more rivals, such as Pepsi, strengthen their market position (Chen & Chen, 2014). Therefore, the company’s ability to recapture its declining market growth will depend on the management’s ability to address the underlying marketing problem. The firm has a problem in narrowing its focus and making fast decisions to prevent it from being overtaken by competitors. Like all other companies, Coca-Cola relies on first and efficient decision-making, and anything that slows the process leaves it vulnerable to its rivals. The future of the problem includes possible extreme competition from quicker competitors in the soft drink market.

While Coca-Cola has remained a leading brand in the soft drink market for decades, the management should recognize changes in the dynamics as strong brands, such as Pepsi, have emerged and competed successfully with the global giant. Brands that compete at the same level, such as Coke and Pepsi, can no longer depend on the past ways of doing things, such as marketing. They should realize when their usual marketing method has outlived its usefulness and focus on new, more innovative approaches. Regardless of this need, Coca-Cola appears to have missed the opportunity to change. For instance, the company relied on research and development to create new brands but failed to make an identity for each, possibly due to inadequate market research. The challenge emerges from the brand competition, which results in innovative new products and features to gain the customer’s attention and loyalty. Me-too offerings are standard in the market, such as the rush by Coca-Cola to produce a new product immediately a competitor does. As a result, the company has introduced brands into the market that lack individual identity.

Problem Definition

The marketing problem facing the company today is the inability to narrow down its brand’s focus since its chief growth officer oversees the corporate strategy, marketing, and customer and commercial operations. The company has a broad role, making it difficult to generate sufficient information from the market to hasten its decision-making process (Jacobsen, 2020). The firm had to “broaden its approach” to marketing, which focuses on growing instead of creating awareness about the brand and what the company offers to the market. As a result, it lacks an adequate understanding of what the customers need and has risked being overtaken by competitors, such as Pepsi. Besides, Coca-Cola diversified its brand, which has created a challenge in that each brand lacks its independent identity (Kwok, 2019). The problem could be due to the failure of the market management team to narrow down its focus on the market and understand what customers want. The fizzy dream products remain the most known among what the company offers its customers, which has hindered new products, such as ice tea, to acquire a considerable market size in the soft drink industry.

Decision-Making Problem Definition

To effectively address the marketing issue, the marketing team should have a clear definition of the problem and its impact on the company. The information will help the company recapture its market and compete with Pepsi and other competitors through effective decision-making. The company’s problem is the diversification challenge, without a clear identity for independent brands and a lack of sufficient market information to understand what customer needs in the soft drink market (Kwok, 2019). The company should narrow its focus to ensure that each of the brands has an identity and has adequate information to understand how to market each to customers based on their needs. The company should have a differentiating point to counter the rivalry presented by competitors, such as Pepsi. The company’s global vice-president of creative, Rodolfo Echeverria, acknowledged that “When you have 500+ brands around the world it is a really heavy duty to give all those children a personality, a specific tone and manner and something distinctive to say all around the world” (Fleming, 2018). Therefore the comprehensive focus, the lack of broad focus, and insufficient information to meet customers’ needs are the most significant challenges facing the firm.

Research Problems

Coca-Cola’s marketing management team should consider several questions that guide research in solving the identified problem, which threatens its future. Below is a list of research questions that the market researcher will focus on to understand and propose solutions for the problem:

1. How can Coca-Cola narrow its focus in the soft drink market to remain relevant?
2. How can Coca-Cola address the lack of brand identity created by diversification?
3. What information should the Coca-Cola marketing management team collect from the soft drink market to improve its ability to meet customer needs?
4. What strategies should Coca-Cola implement to counter the increasing competition from other soft drink companies, such as Pepsi?

Branch Hypotheses

In market research, the hypothesis will guide the researcher in collecting and analyzing data to test it and determine the validity in solving the identified marketing problem. According to Kalinichenko et al. (2015), a hypothesis is a proposed explanation or a supposition, which a researcher makes with limited evidence and forms the basis for further research to test its validity. The marketing research project will have a null (H0) and the alternative hypothesis (H1) to study the research problem and propose an effective solution.

Hypothesis 1

H0: There is no relationship between Coca-Cola’s narrow focus in brand marketing and the lack of brand identity created by diversification and the declining market growth and competitiveness

H1: There is a strong relationship between Coca-Cola’s narrow focus in brand marketing and the lack of brand identity created by diversification and the declining market growth and competitiveness.

Hypothesis 2

H0: There is no relationship between the inadequate market research (due to general focus) and lack of adequate knowledge of customer needs and the declining market share lost to competitors, such as Pepsi.

H1: H0: There is a strong relationship between the inadequate market research (due to general focus) and lack of adequate knowledge of customer needs and the declining market share lost to competitors, such as Pepsi.

Expected Survey Schedule

The researcher will conduct a survey on the company to collect and analyze data to answer the research questions and test the hypothesis. The survey will be conducted from the marketing team, including the management, to help understand some of the causes of the identified marketing problems and help the company implement relevant changes to improve its market size and remain competitive. The survey’s setting is the company’s premise, where most of the target respondents will be accessible. The schedule is determined by respondents’ accessibility and the adequate time required to complete the project successfully. Below is a simple table that shows the proposed plan of the survey, which will take four months to complete:

References

Chen, Z., & Chen, Z. (2014). Product line rivalry and firm asymmetry. The Journal of Industrial Economics, 62(3), 417-435.

Fleming, M. (2018). How getting rid of the CMO ‘broadened’ Coca-Cola’s marketing approach. MarketingWeek.

Jacobsen, C. (2020). Coke must tackle these 3 marketing challenges if it’s to win the newest cola war vs. Pepsi, The Wall Street Journal

Kalinichenko, L. A., Kovalev, D. Y. E., Kovaleva, D. A., & Malkov, O. Y. E. (2015). Methods and tools for hypothesis-driven research support: A survey. Informatics and Its Applications, 9(1), 28-54.

Kwok, S. (2019). The challenges in keeping Coca-Cola’s centenarian brand fresh. Retrieved from https://www.marketing-interactive.com/the-challenges-in-keeping-coca-colas-centenarian-brand-fresh

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