My article written by Avi Dan, “Just How Does Coca-Cola Reinvent Itself in a Changed World?” discusses the marketing focus for Coca Cola as laid out by current Chief of Marketing executive, Joe Tripodi. Changing consumer preferences have drastically effected the consumer opinion of the Coca-Cola brand and the company has begun losing its relevancy. In order to try to change consumer opinion of their product, the company marketing strategy will focus on 4 specific areas: packaging, partnerships, products & equipment and cultural leadership. In addition the company is also targeting a specific demographic group known as Millennials.
In order to monitor the marketing environment, Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer, Joe Tripoli and fellow marketers have to engage in environmental scanning, environmental analysis and study demographic factors. – Environmental Scanning – is the process of collecting information about forces in the marketing environment by observation. For example
– Environmental Analysis - is the process of assessing and interpreting the information collected from the environmental scanning.
In the article Tripoli explains why the Coca-Cola brand must evolve to keep up with wants of its customers. Two external environmental forces affecting the company currently are social cultural and technological. Social and cultural forces refers to the structure and dynamics of individuals and groups and their behaviors, beliefs, thought patterns and lifestyles, and friendship. These trends affect all company’s marketing operations. Coca-Cola has done their research and is currently targeting Millennials to improve their brand equity and sales.
According to our text book reading Millennials are youthful consumers born between 1979 -1994. This group of consumers are is one of the larger groups of generations in the U.S and, they’re on the edge of commanding the largest wallet power set to surpass the baby boomers. It’s estimated they’ll be spending $200 billion annually by 2017 and $10 trillion over their lifetimes as consumers, in the U.S. alone (Marketing Essentials, 2015). The millennial consumer characteristic traits are: tech-savvy, media-connected generation (facebook, twitter, etc), and being that group is much more diverse and embraces diversity more so than other generations therefore like customized products. The article gives a great example of how Coca-Cola is addressing the needs and wants of the millennial consumer through new packaging. Coke currently has replace the word Coke with popular names like Mike, Suzy, Jen or Dave. I’ve seen these commercials and wished I had a more popular name I would love to see KaBrile on a soda bottle.
Technology is another external environmental factor that effect company brands. Coke’s leaders know that the advancement of technology cannot be stopped and you must adapt or be left behind. Younger generations instead of holding a Coke, they hold their iPhones. In an effort to capture the loyalty of the millennial group and their love of new technology, Coke has introduced the Freestyle soda machine. A new generation soda fountain dispenser that allows the consumer to create their own soft drink combinations. The Freestyle machine also has a mobile app that lets its consumers save all their flavor blends. This technical monitoring gives Coca-Cola insight on consumer wants and new product ideas.
Marketing Mix – is an operational procedure used by marketing teams to build gratifying relationships between consumer and retailer. This procedure and or strategy is also known as the 4P’s - product, place, promotion and pricing strategies are used to a particular target market. In Coca Cola’s case that target market or group are the Millennials mentioned throughout this paper. My article didn’t go into depth discussing the marketing mix of Coca Cola. I was able to research and retrieve this information from the Coca-Cola’s 2014 Annual
