Always Coca Cola

2. Coca Cola is the largest beverage company in the world, with locations in 206 countries and over 500 products sold worldwide. This is due largely because of their genius marketing. The book defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”(Pg 346) Even a company of this magnitude has a tough competitor, Pepsi-Cola. Sales started dropping after consumers started drinking more juices, teas, and energy drinks. This could be blamed on the negative light that the media had been shining on soft drinks saying how unhealthy they are. Obesity rates are higher than ever with 1 in every 4 adults being overweight. You can’t blame America’s obesity on soda alone but it still hurt the soda industry. Coca Cola admits that the company themselves are to blame because they got arrogant according to the video. They started to rely on the power of their brand name and the products they already had. Instead they should have been creating new ones and trying to find better and cheaper ways to run the company. You can learn from Coca Cola’s mistakes not to take anything for granted in business because the market will turn on you if you don’t give them what they want. A more positive lesson you can learn from Coca Cola is that having things very unique to your company will greatly help your sales. For Coca Cola that could be the curved bottle shape that they own, their classic logo, catchy jingles that have lasted for decades, or the fact that everyone has memories they can associate with Coke. They use these trademarks to their advantage when marketing. Coca Cola is famous for their great marketing thanks to all their marketing research. Marketing research is “the analysis of markets to determine opportunities and challenges, and to find the information needed to make good decisions.” (Pg 354)