The Coca-Cola Company - Market Overview Paper

The Coca-Cola Company is the world's leading manufacture, marketer, and distributor of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, used to produce more than 230 beverage brands. Year after year, the company has been discovering new foreign markets to bring higher profits to fulfill its ultimate obligation to provide consistently attractive returns to the owners of the company and to enlarge its customer base in order to achieve economics of scale. Due to strong Competition with Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola wants to reduce its risk and increase its global market share by going international. Presently, the company has already reached six billion consumers nearly two hundred countries.

Coca-Cola Company has been very successful in international marketing effort. Aggressive advertising, branding and market segmentation have played an important part in the success. It has portrayed itself as fun, playfulness, freedom, lifestyle and the international appeal of Coca-Cola. The company has sponsored big events, such as the Olympics, Sea Games, FIFA Cup, and International Film Festivals all over the world to create awareness, credibility and to brand itself as a world-class company. It also makes big donations to organizations, charities, and involvement in the communities. These activities have aided Coca-Cola in creating a positive image and consumer's perception toward the company.

Though the company makes the world its target market, segmenting by diverse consumer preferences is still require to help Coca-Cola to serve the consumers better. As different segments of different countries have various preferences or cultures, Coca-Cola tried to expand with new flavors, brands and even reduce the sugar contents in its Coke, to suit the different segments. Coca-Cola entered foreign markets in various ways. The most common modes of entry are direct exporting, licensing, and franchising. There are different types of franchising. The type that is used by Coca-Cola Company is manufacturer sponsored wholesaler franchise system. It is very comparable to licensing but the only difference is that the finish products are sold to the retailers in local market.

Foreign environment factors have influenced the Coca-Cola strategies in international marketing. Culture has a tremendous effect on people's preferences and perception. Language is one of the aspects of culture that marketers must take care of, in term of translating product name,