Coca Cola Company General Strategy

Company General Strategy

Resources and capabilities

Thanks to its numerous resources and capabilities, Coca Cola has been able to become the largest company of the non-alcoholic beverage industry. These resources and capabilities can be divided into three categories: physical, human, and financial. Coca Cola’s main physical resources and capabilities include its manufacturing plants around the world, and the company’s efficiency and productivity in utilizing them, as well as Coca Cola’s marketing efforts, creating a strong and sustainable brand image around the world.

Next, Coca Cola’s human resources and capabilities consist in the 100,300 people employed by the company globally, as well as its 250 bottling partners, which allow

In fact, in the first decades after its creation, Coca Cola focused on both developing new kind of products and accessing new markets around the world. However, as the company has recently expanded its activities to 200 countries, it started focusing mostly on product development in order to better respond to changes in customers’ needs and tastes.

One of the factors that resulted in this product development strategy is the fact that more and more health-conscious people are choosing healthy and low-calories beverages, which has forced Coca Cola to diversify its products (Coca Cola, n.d.). As a result, the company created Diet Coke in 1982 - which has been the world’s top diet soda since 1986 - and Coca Cola Zero in 2005. Other low-calories alternatives were created using Truvia as a sweetener instead of sugar, such as Coca Cola life or Sprite Green. Coca Cola also recently launched the mini can for some of its most popular drinks, to provide alternatives for customers who are more conscious of portion sizes and

As a result, Coca Cola is committed to its objective of making every bottle 100% recyclable, and introduced its PlantBottle technology in 2009 (Coca Cola, n.d.). PlantBottle packaging is made of 30% plant-based renewable materials and is entirely recyclable. Some of the Coca Cola brands use this technology exclusively, which won various awards for its innovative qualities.

International strategy

Like most other international companies, Coca Cola has had to compromise between standardization of its products and activities across the world, and their adaptation to respond to local requirements. In order to reflect this compromise, Coca Cola has adopted a transnational strategy, taking advantage of the benefits of both the global and the multinational strategies while seeking to minimize their drawbacks.

In fact, Coca Cola has always paid attention to the changing needs and tastes of customers, and especially to cultural diversity as the company expanded internationally. For this reason, part of the company’s international strategy relies on adaptation to the local market: Coca Cola has been differentiating its marketing actions - such as advertising campaigns - according to the countries that they are targeting, as can be seen