Coca-Cola's Business and Corporate-Level Strategy and Behavior in Slow and Fast-Cycle Market

Business-Level and Corporate-Level Strategy
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Institutional Affiliation
Business-Level and Corporate-Level Strategies
Introduction
Coca-Cola is the largest and the most famous soft drink company in the world and history. It is one of the highly recognized brands. It was established in Atlanta, Georgia in the year 1886 by Dr. John S. Pemberton. Coca-Cola began as a fountain beverage formulated by mixing carbonated water and Coca-Cola syrup at Jacob's Pharmacy. Coca-Cola Company got patented in 1887 and was registered with the trademark title in the year 1893. By 1895, the soft drink was sold in all the States of America. Coca-Cola spread throughout United Sates through franchising its bottling operations as early as 1899. In 1906 it had franchised the operations internationally, and to date, Coca-Cola has reached every corner of the world through franchising. Some of the famous drinks are Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Stoney and Krest. Each of these drinks is flavored in a unique way to satisfy the needs of various customers worldwide.
Coca-Cola made its first marketing effort in 1887 through the use of a coupon that was promoting free sample of the drink. Couponing had a significant impact in popularizing the company's products and was later followed by newspaper adverts which carried promotional items that had the Coca-Cola script to prospects that were majorly pharmacies. Since the 1970s, Coca-Cola's marketing strategy has transformed into a connection of a particular brand with friends, fun and good times. An example of such scripts is "I'd like to buy the world a coke" and "have coke and smile." These were the prominent fun promotional messages in the 1970's which actually proved efficient and up to date Coca-Cola still embraces this promotional strategy. Early 2000 were marked by the promotional script "open a coke, open happiness." Currently, the prominent promotional text is "taste a Coke, taste the feeling." This promotional script has been amplified by a song in different languages throughout the world. This marketing technique has proved very significant in stimulating sales of a brand.
Coca-Cola Company became a publicly traded company since 1920, and its stock is listed on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Coca-Cola issued the first lot of the shares which attracted a 40 dollar per common share and 100 dollars per preferred share. The rate has since been maintained around these figures with slight changes.
Coca-Cola is the world's number one in selling the soft drinks. However, its monopolistic state has never been guaranteed due to the existence of tough competitors in the market such as PepsiCo, Monster Beverage Corp, Dr. Pepper Snapple Inc. and Suntory Beverage and Food Ltd. Despite the existence of these competitors, Coca-Cola has persistently stayed on the top because of its secret on the special flavor that makes its brands to stand out in the market. Coca-Cola Company has also not ignored this competition and has reacted towards it through two marketing strategies; increased marketing spend and changing focus on the healthier variants of drinks.
Thus, this paper seeks to analyze the essential business-level strategies that suit Coca-Cola Company and have the potential to sustain long-term success as well as corporate-level strategies that would be appropriate for Coca-Cola's future prosperity. Additionally, the paper will evaluate the nature and level of competition in the beverage industry through the determination of the main competitors and comparison of their strategies at each level. Finally, the paper will assess and weigh Coca-Cola and competitors business level that are co-operating level strategies behaviors under slow-cycle and fast-cycle markets.
Business-level strategies
Business-level strategies are a set of plans and means which a business can use in enhancing several functions and accomplishments in their premise operation. Multinational business corporations tend to use more sophisticated business strategies as compared to small businesses because they have numerous departments that serve different purposes on behalf of the business (Hrebiniak, 2013). There are five unique level strategies. These are differentiation, cost leadership, focused differentiation, and focused low cost and the amalgamation of low cost and differentiation strategies (Hrebiniak, 2013).
Regarding differentiation, customers are offered the same product but accompanied by a set of unique characteristics that best suit their needs. This is an alternative strategy to lowering prices of commodities. This strategy works best for companies that offer high-quality products, show high levels of creativity in developing products, deals in products with a wider range of characteristics, possess high levels of innovativeness, offer good customer service and incorporates technological advancement in service delivery (Rothaermel, 2015).
Cost leadership strategy sets a company in a competitive position by enabling it to tap a large number of customers based on prices. The company sets prices based on the internal efficiency with the main target of creating a margin that will keep it above the average cost and returns and that the price is favorable enough for the customers so as to increase their purchasing power. This strategy applies to firms that deal with standardized products of generic goods which have high acceptance from the customers (Rothaermel, 2015). This will enable the firm to realize profits still after lowering the prices through massive sales. The main task for such companies, therefore, is to achieve the cost leadership status in the industry by continually improving efficiency, reducing production cost below all the competitors in the industry and thus be able to set a low price for goods (Rothaermel, 2015).
Likewise, focused differentiation strategy enables a company to choose a given market segment to offer goods and services basing on their unique set of needs. This is to ensure satisfaction bond creation between the customers and the organization. On the other hand, focused low-cost strategy allows a company to compete by choosing a target market in which they concentrate on by slightly altering the prices of their goods and services so that they are relatively cheaper than the competitors (Pendergrast, 2013)'. The customers would, therefore, opt to buy their products and services at the expense of the competitors. Lastly, an amalgamation of low cost and differentiation strategies provides a chance to the company to penetrate the market through lowered product or service prices and capture the market share through product or service differentiation (Hrebiniak, 2013). This strategy is very useful in adjusting a company to be flexible on the environmental situations and core competencies throughout product lines and business units.
Based on the above analysis, it is apparent that differentiation strategy suits Coca-Cola Company. This is because Coca-Cola Company deals in a wide range of beverages which are differentiated by the flavor (Hrebiniak, 2013). The soft drinks are also of high quality and apply high innovativeness in altering the flavor while maintaining the taste. This strategy is also advantageous to Coca-Cola Company because it does not require them to cut down the product prices yet it will still maintain and improve market share (Rothaermel, 2015).
Coca-Cola differentiates its products through brand-based advertisements such as "open a coke open happiness." This promotional ...