Monday, December 9, 2013

Ch. 7 - Business Marketing

     Most of Coca-Cola's B2B marketing is aimed at restaurants, and other small businesses. So to learn how Coke is sold to these businesses, I went to CokeSolutions.com , Coca-Cola's website for selling to businesses.

     On there website, they promise that they will try to build a relationship with all of there partners, and that they will help make they're retailers more profitable and popular with consumers. One way they do this is through two loyalty and promotion programs. The first program offers retailers unique beverage recipes, using a variety of Coke products. Coca-Cola promises that these drinks will " Help you create high-margin menu selections designed to increase beverage incidence and sales". The second program they run is called "Brands with Meals". In this program, you can have your meals analyzed, so that they can be paired up with a specific Coca-Cola beverage, somehow enhancing the flavor of your food.

     Whats also interesting about this website, is that they offer free articles on how business owners can make their businesses more profitable. I find this to be a great idea. These articles offer valuable business tips, outside of just buying Coke beverages. These articles should keep business owners returning to the CokeSolutions website, and increase the sites stickiness, in addition to building trust in the company. They also offer full service on the machines that they sell, under the slogan "It's all taken care of".

Monday, December 2, 2013

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

     In 2001, Coca-Cola test marketed a one-to-one marketing strategy in Australia. The promotion was called "Share a Coke". In this promotion, Coca-Cola sold beverages with customized labels on them. On these labels were popular boys and girls names in Coke's target market, which for this promotion was millennials. When Coke ran the program in Australia, they saw they're sales rise up by 4%. Recently Coca-Cola decided to expand it's "Share a Coke" campaign to many European nations. However, they did not receive the same reaction these new countries. There was an outrage from the Muslim community in Norway when the company decided to put Mohammed on some of it's bottles. Coke responded and promptly took the name off of their bottles.


     Coca-Cola often psycographically segments their products. Many of Coke's advertisements will feature happy, outgoing people. Demograpically, Coca-Cola's target market is younger people aged 18-25, and family oriented individuals 35 and older. Coca-Cola offers a wide variety of products to meet the needs of these vast groups. Towards the more health conscious psycographic, Coca-Cola will market products like Diet Coke and Coke Zero, and towards older people, Coke might advertise the classic Coke that they grew up with.


 One of the biggest ways Coke advertises is through sports. They will often purchase banners on the field of soccer games, and with the winter Olympics coming up in February,  expect to see a lot more of Coca-Cola there. Fans like myself can feel a connection with Coke when they see they're favorite athletes drinking Coke, and perhaps when thinking about an event that they went to will think of Coke.

     Coca-Cola has come under fire in the past, along with many other soft drink companies, for marketing their products to kids. This summer, Coke has promised to not advertise to children under 12, and to offer low-calorie beverage alternatives in each of the over 200 countries it operates in, and to sponsor physical fitness programs. This seems to be a giant leap forward from it's past of marketing to kids as young as toddlers.