MARKETING
"Price wars: Cola Industry"
ABSTRACT
Cola has become a part of our lives in today’s lifestyle. You can find it in your fridge or at your neighbours or some steps away at a general store. You can see people from the lower income groups to the highest paid celebrities and athletes enjoying the taste of the sugary fizzy water. You can find it at parties or at your dinner table. But when you talk about price wars in this industry only two names comes to mind, US Soft Drink Giants The coca-cola company and Pepsico.
INTRODUCTION
Originally the term “price wars in cola industry” is generated from the term “cola wars” which are a set of mutually targeted advertisement and marketing campaign since the 1980s between soft drink manufacturers The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. The term “price wars in cola industry” only focuses on the price element of the competition to identify the various tactics used by both the giants to gain the maximum market share in the complete market (low disposable income groups included). Though this price war is going on at a global level, this project only focuses on the effects and results of these price wars only on the Indian market and its population. Price wars include subjects such as expenditure on creativity, cut throat pricing strategy and production cost cutting.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Cola producers engage in price wars only to secure a larger market share next to its competitors. The beginning of “price wars” is marked
Matthew Ferguson BUSI 400 June 15, 2015 After reading 20 of the latest press releases from PepsiCo, that Pepsi is actually pursuing is product development, market development, and finally forward integration. Pepsi focuses on performing near and long term investments, having future plans on making global investments. The first strategy that Pepsi is pursing is product development, a strategy used by a company to increase sales by modifying or upgrading a product. This entails a lot of research and development expenditures and a main reason being to be major competitors offering better quality products (David & David, 2015, p 138).
Most executives believe pricing to be a zero-sum game, i.e. price increase shall lower volume of sales thus in turn hurting the margin gain, but the other way round need not necessarily be true. This problem arises owing to the setting of prices based on cost-plus basis rather than a customer value point of view basis. The methods to capture such value are: • Better the understanding of
ECONOMICS PROJECT Name: Saatwic Malhotra Course: BBA.LLB (H) Section: A Enrollment Number: 7058 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I express my sincere thanks to Mrs. Tanu Sachdeva, my economics teacher who guided me throughout the project and also gave me valuable suggestions and guidance for completing the project. She helped me to understand the issues involved in the project making besides effectively presenting it. My project has been a success because of her. PEPSICO • PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York. PepsiCo has interests in the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products.
This can be considered a negative impact on both companies as due to the similarity in their products, price wars are often triggered as consumers will tend to purchase the cheap option. With lowering the prices both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are losing potential sale revenues and thus profits. Once the price wars come to a stand still, the businesses look for alternative marketing strategies to get an upperhand, such as products. To respond to this rivalry, PepsiCo has recently expanded their beverage
The product “The products that The Coca-Cola Company sells are called nonalcoholic beverages which include numerous nonalcoholic sparkling beverages; various water products, including packaged, flavored and enhanced waters; juices and nectars; fruit drinks and dilutables (including syrups and powdered drinks); coffees and teas; energy and sports and other performance-enhancing drinks; dairy-based drinks; functional beverages; and various other nonalcoholic beverages. These competitive beverages are sold to consumers in both ready-to-drink and other than ready-to-drink form.” (Coca-Cola Company 10-K 2015) (4) The competition market The Coca-Cola Company Competes in the non-alcoholic beverages part of the commercial beverages industry.
PEPSICO (Pakistan) Business Policy Final Term Project Submitted to: Professor Fareedy Date: 29/06/2015 Submitted by: Zain Anjum 13P01410 MBA II SEC A LAHORE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thanks to my respected professors, parents and friends who always supported me throughout tough times.
Geographic segmentation calls for dividing the market into different geographical units such as regions, cities, or neighborhood. Coca-Cola has a countrywide network of product distribution but the company segments more in urban and suburban areas as compared to rural areas. 1.2. Demographic segmentation In demographic segmentation, the market is divided into groups on the basis of variables such as age, family life cycle, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation, nationality, and social class. Demographic variables are the most popular base of Coca-Cola Company for distinguishing their customer groups.
Cannibalising standard variants: Rising awareness of soft drinks-related health issues, in particular sugar levels, has sparked a trend for “better for you” beverages globally. As for Coca-colas’ carbonates, some countries saw standard cola are being cannibalised by low calorie colas and this represents a challenge. Coca-cola must continue to sustain growth in standard cola and expand low calorie
The high cost of operating in this industry prevents many companies from entering the competitive arena. Last, these two companies engage in non-price product differentiation. Rarely will you see Pepsi attempt to undercut Coca-Cola in price. Instead, you see these companies use creative advertisements to compete (Neary
This aims at developing a deeper consumer desire for the brand, thus giving people more reason to purchase Coke- Cola products instead of competing brands. This is the essence of differentiation. Coca-Cola having an 'action orientation', instead of waiting for change to happen it is at the leading edge, driving action forward. This product differentiation strategy has created global value, brand loyalty, non-price competitor as well as no perceived
3.1 Explain how products are developed to sustain competitive advantage There are three levels of coca cola’s products. They are core product, actual product and augmented product. Core product Coca cola’s products are high quality standards for the customer.
Hence, we can say that these 2 players are involved in a non-cooperative game, the objective being to garner the most profit, and capturing market share being the most effective way to do so. Since Coke and Pepsi are perfect substitutes, the price elasticity of demand should be perfect elastic. However, there are some factors that results in a fairly elastic demand. When Coke increases its price, most of its customers that are highly sensitive to price changes will switch to Pepsi due to the similarity of the taste. Nevertheless, some of its customers that are highly loyal are willing to pay more for Coke
Well to start off the Coca-Cola Company has been around for a little over a hundred years and has flourished in their market. Like any large company, the reason they are targeting the African market is simply the reason they are seeking for new opportunities for future potential growth within the market. This search in opportunities for potential growth is due to from the fact that many of the companies markets outside of Africa are mature, saturated, declining or are experiencing and increased number of competition. Another prime motive as to why Coca-Cola is interested in Africa because they connect through Africa's incomes that are increasing, along with Africa's infrastructure and government which is also improving. Also, Africa’s population
For the Coca-Cola, recognized its brand to be the best global brand around the world. Nevertheless, PepsiCo still working hard and catching up right behind the Coca-Cola, become the biggest rival for Coca-Cola in non-alcoholic drink industry. So what are the competitive advantages these both companies do have, let us discuss. 4.1 Distribution Method Coca-Cola conquer the market by having a very extensive distribution through partnership with bottling partner. Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd, is the largest bottling partner of the Coca-Cola Company in India, by owning 24 bottling plants at strategic location in various states widely covered across India, has an extensive distribution system spanning more than a million outlets.
HISTORY & BACKGROUND OF COCA COLA The Coca Cola company is known as one of the world’s largest carbonated soft drinks company that began before World War II. It is an American-based company found in 1886 by an Atlanta pharmacist. Dr. John S. Pemberton created the formula of French Wine Coca, which is known as Coca Cola now and introduced the carbonated soft drink as a patent medicine at first. The beverage became more noticeable when Frank M. Robison, Dr. Pemberton’s partner changed the product name and created the famous script logo, which he believed that will attract customer in advertising.