Coca Cola Final Mo El Ramahi
An examination of the global strategies of Coca-Cola
Mo El Ramahi
Coca- Cola is one of the most recognized brands in the world. Multi-national corporations use a variety of strategies to market products, such as Levitt’s globalization approach, known as “think global, act global.” Rather Coca- Cola has adopted a “think global, act local” strategy (local in this context refers to national, sub-national and world-regional markets). The objective of this paper is to provide validity for the usage of the approach “think global, act local.” Coca- Cola and Pepsi are said to have a “uniform identity across the world.” Coca-Cola is known to 94% of the world population (Gomez & Rohrer, 2012). Coca-Cola offers regular soda, diet soda, decaffeinated soda, and diet -decaffeinated soda all under the same brand name. Coca-Cola is knows as an American icon. Despite this, it is not the dominant cola brand in America. There is a preference of Pepsi over Coke (Gomez & Rohrer, 2012). Coca-Cola utilizes a variety of marketing strategies that integrate global and localization strategies.
Wilken and Sinclair (2011), conducted an exploratory analysis of three major Multi-national corporations (MNCs)- Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Colgate-Palmolive to examine how these MNCs engage with marketing from global to local and regional. This exploratory analysis tracked discussions over a 10-year period (Wilken & Sinclair, 2011). It is found that Coca-Cola’s dominant global marketing is “glocalization.” This refers to finding the right balance between the bottom line of standardization while meeting the demands of localization and cultural adaptation (Wilken & Sinclair, 2011). Another development noted is “localizing” strategies to cope with market- by- market variations. There is a universal familiarity with the brand of Coke. They work towards localizing their core products for particular markets. Coca-Cola is noted to move away from global standardization ad campaigns to different
Mo El Ramahi
Coca- Cola is one of the most recognized brands in the world. Multi-national corporations use a variety of strategies to market products, such as Levitt’s globalization approach, known as “think global, act global.” Rather Coca- Cola has adopted a “think global, act local” strategy (local in this context refers to national, sub-national and world-regional markets). The objective of this paper is to provide validity for the usage of the approach “think global, act local.” Coca- Cola and Pepsi are said to have a “uniform identity across the world.” Coca-Cola is known to 94% of the world population (Gomez & Rohrer, 2012). Coca-Cola offers regular soda, diet soda, decaffeinated soda, and diet -decaffeinated soda all under the same brand name. Coca-Cola is knows as an American icon. Despite this, it is not the dominant cola brand in America. There is a preference of Pepsi over Coke (Gomez & Rohrer, 2012). Coca-Cola utilizes a variety of marketing strategies that integrate global and localization strategies.
Wilken and Sinclair (2011), conducted an exploratory analysis of three major Multi-national corporations (MNCs)- Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Colgate-Palmolive to examine how these MNCs engage with marketing from global to local and regional. This exploratory analysis tracked discussions over a 10-year period (Wilken & Sinclair, 2011). It is found that Coca-Cola’s dominant global marketing is “glocalization.” This refers to finding the right balance between the bottom line of standardization while meeting the demands of localization and cultural adaptation (Wilken & Sinclair, 2011). Another development noted is “localizing” strategies to cope with market- by- market variations. There is a universal familiarity with the brand of Coke. They work towards localizing their core products for particular markets. Coca-Cola is noted to move away from global standardization ad campaigns to different
References: Gomez, M.B., & Rohrer, W.G. (2012). Coca-Cola: International business strategy for globalization. The business & management review, 3(1). Wilken, R., & Sinclair, J. (2011). Global Marketing Communications and Strategic Regionalism. Globalizations, 8(1), 1-15. doi:10.1080/14747731.2011.544189