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 wel...