Influences in Marketing Strategies, Illustrated by Coca-cola

Consumer behaviour is the study of how individual customers, groups or organizations select, buy, use, and dispose ideas, goods, and services to satisfy their needs and wants. It refers to the actions of the consumers in the marketplace and the underlying motives for those actions.

Marketers expect that by understanding what causes the consumers to buy particular goods and services, they will be able to determine—which products are needed in the marketplace, which are obsolete, and how best to present the goods to the consumers.

According to Engel, Blackwell, and Mansard, ‘consumer behaviour is the actions and decision processes of people who purchase goods and services for personal consumption’. According to Louden and Bitta, ‘consumer behaviour is the decision process and physical activity, which individuals engage in when evaluating, acquiring, using or disposing of goods and services’.

Consumer behaviour is influenced by various factors –

1. Marketing factors such as product design, price, promotion, packaging, positioning and distribution.
2. Personal factors such as age, gender, education and income level.
3. Psychological factors such as buying motives, perception of the product and attitudes towards the product.
4. Situational factors such as physical surroundings at the time of purchase, social surroundings and time factor.
5. Social factors such as social status, reference groups and family.
6. Cultural factors, such as religion, social class—caste and sub-castes.

The knowledge of consumer behaviour enables them to take appropriate marketing decisions in respect of the following factors:

1. Product design/model
2. Pricing of the product
3. Promotion of the product
4. Packaging
5. Positioning
6. Place of distribution

How Coca-Cola influence Customer Behavior?

Customer behavior is influenced in psychological and sociological. The international brand Coca-Cola, the biggest soft drinks and beverage company in the world, is very successful in producing effects on consumer behaviors. Coca-Cola is one of the most valuable and well-known brand in the word. Although the company is a manufacture of beverage, it business has penetrated in every walk of life. The brand of Coca-Cola itself is a symbol of taste. However, although Coca-Cola is a successful brand and its business has covered more than 200 countries in the world, there are still lots of choices for customers in the supermarket shelves of beverage (Coca-Cola.com, 2016). Beside the effects of famous brand Coca-Cola has built, the company has continued to deliver its brand value to customers in both psychological and sociological.

Sociological Influence

While customers decide whether to buy a brand, or a product, and whether the brand worth a repeatedly purchase, their attitudes and decision making is very important. Attitudes toward a brand are the results of psychological perception and memory. A significant factor effects customers’ decision making is the social-cultural differences between the brand and preferences of customers. For example, carbonated drinks of Coca-Cola may be well welcomed by the young aged from 16 to 28, for children, middle age and old people, the carbonated drinks are less attractive (Broniarczyk and Griffin, 2014). For another, for western countries like the USA, the traditional eating habit of fast food makes people familiar with cola drinks. However, eastern countries, including China, Japan, Korea, are less accessible for cola drinks. And people have raised their concerns on healthy diet, the carbonated drink is regarded as high in fats and sugars.

So how Coca-Cola maintain its attractiveness facing the socio-cultural differences and changes? The answer is changes and innovations in brand and products. Not only carbonated drinks, Coca-Cola company provides product categories including juice, water, teas, coffee. In addition, the low & no calorie, caffeine free, low sodium categories are provided to customers with special needs. For customers in different age and different countries and regions, they can choose their preferred product category. But the purchase decision making of Coca-Cola product categories based on the condition that customers highly accept the Coca-Cola brand. In fact, as the largest beverage company, Coca-Cola has the largest sales in both sparkling and still beverages.

More choices can weaken the influences from socio-cultural differences. In the category of carbonated soft drink, Diet Coke and Coke Zero are provided for customers who have higher requirements on the health of diet and low sugars and calorie but still like the flavor of cola.

Psychological Influence

Before customers make their purchase decision, the collect and identify information they needed. Senses delivered by enterprises result in the selective attention of customers. Customers get information of appearance, sound, taste, smell, touch of a product, and then choose their preferring one. These senses and information finally create sensation and perception in the mind of customers. Sensation and perception create basic acceptation of a brand, and learning and memory enhanced the acceptance. That how the psychological influences a brand, or a product, create to customers. Thoughts and decisions of customers may be affected and changed by the psychological factors and finally the whole customer behaviors are different (Iacobucci, 2014).

A typical brand logo of Coca-Cola is pictured as white letters in red background, or red letters in white background. The strong contrast colors in Coca-Cola brand image convey impressive brand identity to customers. The color red in white is striking, expressing the brand promotion of passion, active lifestyle. The taste of Coca-Cola is a distinctive element that make it different from others, especially Pepsi. Tastes of Coca-Cola carbonated drinks with unique formula to produce are unique for customers. Senses conducted by Coca-Cola place the impressive brand image of Coca-Cola into the mind of customers.

In addition to the perceived sensation and perception by customers, Coca-Cola promotes its brand in every walk of life to get repeated exposures. People may be familiar with the Coca-Cola bottle image, that’s the results of its repeated exposures. In movie, music, and sports, Coca-Cola make its brand connected with people’s lives. Coca-Cola puts its ads in movies, puts lyrics in bottles, and provides sponsorships for sports.

Moreover, Coca-Cola unveils Coca-Cola capsule collection at Berlin Fashion Week. It indicates the brand would get higher exposures to the world (Coca-Cola.com, 2016). Along with the positive brand spirit expressed in its exposures, Coca-Cola delivers an active lifestyle and a perception of good life which are accessible for customers. The perception is enhanced by its repeated exposures over and over again through its ads in different ads, media, and places. With its recognizable brand image, brand associations are created in the process of learning and memory (Solomon, 2014).

Brands need to shift their focus from multicultural marketing to cross-cultural marketing. We define cross-cultural marketing as “the ability for one brand to cross over from one culture to another.” Essentially, brands are moving away from traditional, siloed multicultural marketing to “marketing that simulates across ethnic groups, leveraging ethnic insights to reach across multiple ethnic markets, including the general market.”

Cross cultural campaigns by coca cola

In 2013, Coca Cola aired a heartfelt commercial. The ad spot featured actors singing the Patriotic tune “America the Beautiful” in 7 different languages. The company called the ad “It’s Beautiful,” and it was indeed moving to many people. This is what advertising specialists refer to as inclusive marketing. The ad appeals to a wide variety of demographics, old, young, and capitalizes on the diverse American population. “The new spot reinforces the sentiment of unity and that America is beautiful and Coca-Cola is for everyone,” reported a Coca Cola representative on their corporate blog, “the overall message of inclusion communicated by the ad reflects some of Coca-Cola’s most important values.” By coming up with a creative and emotionally stirring spot that contained translated content, Coca Cola was able to represent not only their product, but their corporate values of inclusion as well.

In 2008, Coke was attempting to penetrate the South Korean market, one that they didn’t quite understand as well as they wished. They decided to use what they knew about the culture to expand their South Korean market share and revenue. Marketing analysts noticed that 43% of South Korean citizens had an online profile or blog, and that 90% of the 20-29 years old demographic logged into social media at least once a day. Coca Cola reached out to young mom bloggers in that age bracket to use their web properties to share information, evangelize the brand, and increase loyalty. They also used their South Korean bloggers to provide them with more cultural information about how to best communicate their message for maximum efficiency within the South Korean population.

Share a coke campaign was launched in 2014 by the coca cola and company as one of their techniques to increase sales. Coca Cola replaced the distinctive coca cola name on bottles of coke with most popular names. Coca Cola text was reduced to a smaller font at the top starting of share a coca cola with. The rest of the branding is the same so the consumers can still recognize the product. Consumers were also offered the opportunity to create virtual labels online with their name on them. Virtual labels can be shared with family and friends online. Creating a buzz through personalisation, personalisation can have a universal appeal. A coke bottle with your name on it is likely you would want to show others. Inexpensive personalization tool for consumers i.e., all you need to do is purchase the bottle of coke. Social media played a huge role in the success of the campaign. When people were successful in finding their name on a bottle, they were encouraged to share their find on social media using the hashtag #ShareACoke.

Coca-Cola’s “Share A Coke” campaign was one of the most successful campaigns of the decade. The campaign has made its way to over 70 countries, and its bottles are still on shelves today. The “Share A Coke” campaign enticed customers to search for their names on bottles and share on social media.

Coke made sure the campaign was inclusive, including names that ranged from Jose to Laura to Maya. And if someone’s name could not be found in stores, customers could personalize their own bottle online. Instead of doing siloed multicultural campaigns, Coke was able to target myriad cultures with one campaign.

Digital marketing campaigns by Coca Cola

1. Love story

Plastic is a hot topic right now, particularly for FMCG brands like Coca Cola. In 2017, Coca Cola Great Britain created a recycling-focused advert called “Love Story”. The ad, which involved a set made entirely out of recyclable material, depicted two plastic bottles falling in love over and over again – all thanks to the magic of recycling. With Coca Cola recently announcing that it aims to collect and recycle the equivalent of all its packaging by 2030 – the campaign was a notable example of the brand stepping up on this issue.

2. Taste the Feeling

In 2016, Coca Cola rolled out the integrated ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign – an update to its previous ‘Open Happiness’ tagline. With a number of international agencies working on the campaign, it involved 10 TV commercials, digital, print, out-of-home, and shopper initiatives. Overall, the theme was to offer an insight into the everyday moments and feelings that surround drinking Coca Cola, as well as to show the diversity of people around the world who enjoy it. ‘Taste the Feeling’ also coincided with the ‘one brand’ strategy in Great Britain, which markets Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero under one umbrella (in terms of branding and design).

3. #ThatsGold

In celebration of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Coca Cola Brazil launched the #ThatsGold campaign, designed to celebrate the feeling that comes with accomplishing something great – no matter how big or small. Ads for the campaign featured famous gold medal-winning moments from previous Olympic Games, as well as famous athletes like Nathan Adrian and Jodie Williams. The ads were tailored to global markets too, with countries like the US and Australia seeing more of their own national athletes featured. Alongside digital and out-of-home ads, #ThatsGold also included an experiential element, with the Olympic Park hosting a special Coca Cola space for visiting fans to have their photos taken with props and buy branded pins and memorabilia.

4. Open Happiness

Open Happiness is a global marketing campaign for The Coca-Cola Company that was rolled out worldwide in the first half of 2009, following the company's 'Coke Side of Life' advertising campaign.

5. The Friendship Experiment

Over in China Coca-Cola ran a campaign that invited people to take part in a ‘friendship experiment’ with photographer Kurt Tang. Tang toured the city of Guangzhou asking strangers to take part in a moment of connection in front of his lens.

Getting your brand’s image and desired advertising message across in a foreign country is a careful balance of cultural knowledge and translations. Coca Cola has demonstrated two ways of doing this. The first one was created for a domestic audience, making members of diverse cultural groups feel included in the advertising message. The second method was to use the members of a foreign culture about which Coca Cola didn’t know much to provide them with social marketing and cultural data to further the company’s penetration of that country’s soft drink and beverage market. Business owners and marketing professionals can take these tips, put them in their international marketing pocket, and utilize them in conjunction with translations by native speakers to effectively reach foreign audiences.

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