Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz
When the chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Company made his maiden visit to India in August 2017, it was clear that he wanted the Indian branch of the company, Coca-Cola India Private Limited, to achieve many ambitious goals. These included reducing the sugar content in the company's products, introducing more juice-based drinks and water, and making small entries into the dairy segment. For a company that had long stressed its carbonated and fruit-based drink segments, Coca-Cola India Private Limited was now indicating its strong intent to steer away from its core competency. The aim was to recast the company as a "total beverage company," with possible ventures across all relevant beverage categories. Should the company take a chance and move away from its core competency? Should it tweak existing products, seek to extend its brands, or try to create entirely new offerings? How could Coca-Cola India Private Limited succeed in its shift towards "total beverage" solutions, and what challenges should it prepare for as part of this shift? Sandeep Puri is affiliated with Asian Institute of Management. Shreya Gupta is affiliated with Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad.
Swot Analysis of "Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz" written by Sandeep Puri, Archit Kacker, Shreya Gupta includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Coca Cola facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Branding, Manufacturing and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz casestudy better are - – there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Coca Cola, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Coca Cola operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Coca Cola
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Coca Cola
Strengths Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Coca Cola in Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Coca Cola
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Coca Cola does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Coca Cola is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Coca Cola has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Coca Cola has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Ability to lead change in Sales & Marketing field
– Coca Cola is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Coca Cola in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Coca Cola are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Coca Cola is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Sandeep Puri, Archit Kacker, Shreya Gupta can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Coca Cola has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Coca Cola has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Coca Cola in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management
– Coca Cola is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Coca Cola to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Coca Cola to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz are -
Need for greater diversity
– Coca Cola has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz, in the dynamic environment Coca Cola has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Coca Cola has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Sandeep Puri, Archit Kacker, Shreya Gupta suggests that, Coca Cola is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Coca Cola has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Coca Cola has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Coca Cola has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Coca Cola, firm in the HBR case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Coca Cola has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Coca Cola even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Coca Cola has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Coca Cola needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Sales & Marketing strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Opportunities Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Coca Cola has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Coca Cola to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Coca Cola can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Sales & Marketing segment.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Coca Cola in the consumer business. Now Coca Cola can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Coca Cola can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Coca Cola has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Coca Cola has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Coca Cola to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz case study. Coca Cola can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Coca Cola to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Sales & Marketing industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Coca Cola can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Coca Cola to increase its market reach. Coca Cola will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Buying journey improvements
– Coca Cola can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Coca Cola can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Coca Cola can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Coca Cola can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Coca Cola operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Threats Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Coca Cola has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Coca Cola needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Coca Cola can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Coca Cola in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Coca Cola high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Regulatory challenges
– Coca Cola needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Coca Cola with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Coca Cola in the Sales & Marketing industry. The Sales & Marketing industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Coca Cola demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Coca Cola needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Coca Cola can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Coca Cola is facing in Sales & Marketing sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Coca Cola.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Coca-Cola India: More than Just Sugar and Fizz is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Coca Cola needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.