Role and Responsibilities of Marketing Function of Coca-Cola

Role and Responsibilities of Marketing Function of Coca-Cola

Definition of Marketing: Marketing is the process of identifying customer needs and then satisfying their needs by proving the right product to the right place to the right person for the right price. Marketing is the process by which companies (Marketing Function of Coca-Cola) create customer value by providing maximum return on their investment to purchase a product or services. Today marketing is not just a function of telling and selling it is more about satisfying customer needs. In a narrower business context, marketing involves building a profitable, value exchange relationships with customers (Kotler, 2017). Marketing is given priority by the company just because of a direct relationship with the sales. Good marketing creates a positive result on the sales revenue and profitability of the company.

Importance of Marketing

Business people must show their importance to marketing and its functions because of its beneficial characteristics. A highly effective marketing strategy can make a sales figure to double. You know that marketing for different category product is different because of different customer segments. It is the responsibility of a marketing team to do marketing for the purpose of reaching the customer’s minds, analyze the product, induce them to purchase from available options. Without marketing, no company can grow locally and internationally. If you have modern production facilities, good finance and administration team, and a good product but you do not have a good marketing team with a good marketing strategy then your company will not be able to sell the product in the market. The main thing is you have to reach your target customer with a proper marketing policy then your product will be purchased. Successful companies always use their resources to continuously promote their product which increases their sales, satisfy the customer, and then create a good brand in the market.

Marketing Function

Marketing is not just a selling function, it is a set of nine functions that actually lead the company to the right marketing activities. Proper marketing functions must include the following activities which will be performed by the marketer.

1. Analyze Market Information
2. Buying Function
3. Market Segmentation
4. Product Development and Management
5. Pricing
6. Distribution
7. Labeling
8. Promotion
9. After Sales Service

Analyze Market Information

First of all, as a marketer, you must need to collect the information from the market and then analyze all the available information to come up with an effective marketing policy and strategy. This one is one of the core functions of marketing. It is the responsibility of a marketing team to identify the customer preference, the demand for the product, and overall market conditions. Regular collection and analysis of industry data, company data, and individual product data should use to formulate marketing strategy.

Buying Function

This one is one of the curtail functions of marketing. Companies purchase a huge amount of raw materials, packing materials, and any other materials for a bulk amount. The least cost of materials with a lower cost of inventory holding will reduce the overall product cost. That’s why the more effectively the company uses its buying function the more cost competitiveness will be. Here the buying function of a company will be. Within the scope of this function, the company does its materials budgeting and costing. They also maintain good customer and vendor relationships, sometimes they involve the vendors by investing in the development program of suppliers and their supply chain.

Market Segmentation

Another core marketing function (Marketing Function of Coca-Cola) is to segment the market into a different group so that for a different product different market segments can be identified and apply promotional activities. Market segmentation is the step to identify who is your target market and segmentation helps to select the group of customer basket (Qualtrics, 2018). The main objective is to identify the customer basket and target accordingly.

Product Development and Management

Actually the product is developed based on the demand related information provided by the marketing team (Marketing Function of Coca-Cola). The marketing team works closely with the product development team and involvement with the management of the whole process so that the right product can be developed for the market. Marketing people will market the product that’s why in the product development phase the involvement of the marketing team is necessary.

Pricing Function

Before setting the price of particular product suggestions from the marketing team should take so that the right price of the product can set. This function (Marketing Function of Coca-Cola) helps the marketer to reach to the target customer. Price cannot be changed frequently, that’s why future cost information should come from the marketing team and determine a price.

Distribution

Without a proper supply chain management and distribution planning, you cannot reach the product to your destination. Think about it, you have spent a lot of money on promotional activities and huge demand has been created in the market but your product is not available in the customer corner because you do not have a proper distribution channel. A proper marketing strategy also works with the logistics and distribution team to develop logistic planning. The product will move from the factory to the target customer through the land, water, and air by using trucks, ships, and airbus. 

Labeling

A label of a product creates an outer look of the product and a brand. The more attractive the label is the more purchase desire will come from the buyers. The market is very much competitive, so to capture the market share you have a good label to represent your brand.

Promotion

Marketing is all about developing a marketing strategy to promote the product. The more eye-catching the promotional activities are the more attraction will be created in the mind of the customer which will induce them to purchase. Some positive promotional activities will boost up the sales of a particular product. You can find many companies work only for the promotion of the companies and they do research to identify the promotional message whether it is monetary or non-monetary benefit consumer will get. Based on the message their actual objective is to promote the product in the market.

After Sales Service

After-sales service is beneficial for both end, customer, and sellers. The reason is the customer will get rid of what they were having a problem with and the seller or marketer will get the feedback from the market. This feedback will lead to identify the problem of the product and also identify the customer expectation from the product. If there is good customer service, then a positive image is created in the customer mind which will stay a longer period. And this will help to develop a loyal customer basket. That’s why as a function of marketing a company must have a good after-sales service.

Market Function Related with Coca-Cola (Marketing Function of Coca-Cola)

Market Analysis

Coca-Cola has a good information management system that ensures the proper record of all activities involves the current business. They also collect information considering the micro and macro-economic factors. What is the current market size, who are acquiring what, where market trends moving, what are the expectation of the customer, how the business of Coca-Cola is growing and what are the problem company is facing around the world? All this information is the collection and then analyze to formulate a marketing and development strategy. A market analysis team is always actively monitoring the overall market of the different products of Coca-Cola.

Buying Inventory

Basically Coca-Cola maintains a good level of inventory to ensure the right production flow. As a beverage company, it requires caffeine, sugar, vanilla, citric acid, packing materials, and other materials from both the local and international markets. The core focus point is the quality of raw materials and the price of that particular raw material. The company is using several strategies to buy inventory through contracting with several distributors, dividing the suppliers, and so on (Kotler, 2012). The Cost-effectiveness of Coca-Cola is directly correlated with the buying of raw materials.

Pricing

Coca-Cola is successfully offering all of its products to the market at a competitive price. The main pricing strategy of Coca-Cola is price skimming, market price, and market penetration. In addition to this sometimes they use alternative pricing strategies like psychological pricing, promotional pricing, and segmented pricing.

Promotion

For the beverage business, companies spend a huge amount of money yearly. And this rewards them with increased sales. Coca-Cola spends a huge amount of money every year on promotional activities. Most of them for digital advertisement. Coca-Cola spent $3.96 billion, in 2016, $4 billion, and in 2015 $3.96 billion on global promotional activities. The main competitor of Coca-Cola’s yearly spending was $2.4 billion in 2017, $2.5 billion in 2016 and $2.4 billion in 2015 (Investopedia, 2018)

Over the years Coca-Cola spending for their promotional purpose by using

• Digital Advertisement on TV
• Supporting to the different diversion actions
• Social Media Marketing
• Sponsoring different sports

PESTEL Analysis

A PESTEL analysis is a tool used by marketers to analyses and monitors the external marketing environmental factors that have an impact on an organization. The result of PESTEL is used to identify the threats and weaknesses of Coca-Cola.

Political Factor

Coca-Cola is doing business all over the world. The political condition is not that influencing the business operation for the company. They are aware of all political benefits and obligations.

Economical Factor

The scope of the Coca-Cola business is widely spread around the world. Hundreds of nations they are doing business profitability. Not necessarily every economic factor is favorable to the organization. Sometimes interest rate goes up, sometimes business operation cost is higher. But because of good financial strength, Coca-Cola is managing its business in a good way. They are also creating a lot of employment opportunities for the economy. Billions of products are selling around the globe which increasing the world economy.

Social Factor

Coca-Cola always cares about social factors like population growth, age distribution, health consciousness, career attitudes, etc. They had introduced different products to different levels of customers. Based on the demands of customer preference they actually develop their products and they have a different product for different markets. In Japan, it offers thirty substitute flavors products to attract Japanese customers. In China, they are creating alike labors. For UK, USA market Coca-Cola introduces zero sugar, sugarless products. They are one of the leading brands because of their innovation.

Technological Factor

Coca-Cola always tries to use the most advanced technology for its production process which ensures good quality production of a product with the least manufacturing cost. This company has plants in UK with the best technological equipment to confirm fast distribution times as well as excellence in productivity.

Coca-Cola has used public media for connecting the viewers. When they threw their name movement knocking actual designations on their bottles- clients aligned to take photographs of flagons with their designation on it. These photographs trended on public media places such as   YouTube, Facebook, given that communal evidence and promising Coca-Cola auctions (Lilly, 2014).

Environmental Factor

Coca-Cola is always careful about environmental factors. This company using a huge amount of water collected from underground and in their production plant there may have created wastewater. To eliminate the effluent from the wastewater before dumping they actually treat the water and make it environmentally friendly and then dump. They are also cautious about environmental hazards and they have fire and safety measures in their factory. The environmentally friendly production process is adapted by this company.

Legal Factor

Wherever they are doing business and their production plant is, they are maintaining 100% of the legal obligations which made this company one of the popular brands around the world. They also follow FDA regulations and food & safety measures in the production process.

References

Jain, G. (2018, August 4). Exploring Marketing Functions. Retrieved from

Jindal, S. (2017, December 11). Coca Cola Pricing Strategy.

Philip T. Kotler, G. A. (2017). Principles of Marketing. Pearson Education Limited.

A Look At Coca-Cola’s Advertising Expenses. (2018, October 06). Retrieved from Investopedia

Written by

Md. Shadequr Rahaman

Email: [email protected]