Coca-Cola Analysis

Michael Porter's Five Forces analyze the external and internal environment of a company to increase the awareness of threats and structure of the industry that company competes within. Thus, the Five Forces is an ideal tool which can help companies to maintain their competitiveness with a higher profitability.

The soft drink industry in the United States is a highly profitably, but competitive market. In 2000, carbonated soft drink retail sales were estimated $60.3 billion, however, soft drink consumption growth has slowed in recent years. There are three major companies that hold the majority of sales in the carbonated soft drink industry in the U.S. They are the Coca Cola Company with 44.1% market share, The Pepsi-Cola Company with 31.4% market share, and Dr. Pepper/ Seven Up, Inc. with 14.7% market share. These three companies market the top ten brands account for 73% of soft drink sales in the U.S. Dr. Pepper/ Seven Up, Inc. owns two of the top ten brands: Dr.

The existing concentrate business is largely controlled by Coca-Cola Company (Coca-Cola) and PepsiCo (Pepsi), together claiming a combined 72% of the U.S. carbonated soft drink (CSD) market sales volume in 2009. Refer to Exhibit 1 for an illustration of the CSD industry value chain. For more than a century, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have maintained growth and large market shares through mastering five competitive forces, shown in Exhibit 2, that drive profitability and shape the industry structure.

You know that Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model is a useful tool for analyzing a business. The Model is used to help understand the importance of the five competitive forces and determinea strategy to develop and maintain a competitive advantage. The Five Forces are described and discussed in Chapter 1 of the textbook. They are:

Porter's Five Forces is a simple but powerful tool that consist of 5 different forces to understand the competitiveness of your business environment, and for identifying your strategy's potential profitability. The five forces are degree of rivalry, threat of entry, threat of substitutions, buyer power, and supplier power. Each force is helpful in their own way to get to know your rivals a lot better and get to know what can happen in your market.

The aim of this report is to analyse the main forces driving the market for any specific product of our choice. In details, we will research about the product’s background information, the special characteristics and the market it belongs to. We will also explain the market structure, the supply conditions and barriers of entry, giving an insight of competition and government policies, too. Furthermore, we are going to point out the price elasticities, determinants of demand and sizes of income. Lastly, we will be assessing how this market will develop and the future opportunities for both existing and new firms. For the purpose of this report, we have decided to use Coca-Cola from the Coca-Cola Company, the world leading beverage company. We have discovered that although Coca-Cola is not performing very well in terms of income, it is still the market leader in the soft drink industry. Thus, new rivals’ entrants may be discouraged to compete because of the uncertainty and the competition present in the market.

Soft drink industry is very profitable, more so for the concentrate producers than the bottler’s. This is surprising considering the fact that product sold is a commodity which can even be produced easily. There are several reasons for this, using the five forces analysis we can clearly demonstrate how each force contributes the profitability of the industry.

Porter 's Five Forces Model is a critical instrument to break down an outer aggressive environment of the business. The model incorporates threat of entry, the threat of rivalry, the threat of suppliers, the threat of purchasers and threat of substitutes.

Porter’s Five Forces is a framework that consists of five competitive forces, threat of entry, power of supplier and buyer, threat of substitution and competitive rivalry. These forces facilitate the analysis of the task environment of an industry or company (Wheelen and Hunger, 2009).

The economics of the concentrate business and bottling is different from each other in terms of number and size of rivals and cost structure etc. Concentrate business has few buyers and through its value chain compare to bottling business has many buyer and mid-way player in the soft drink industry. The concentrate manufacturing process involved a little capital investment in machinery, overhead, or labour to reduce the risks whereas bottlers involving high capital investment. Franchise agreements with soft drink industry allowed bottlers to handle the non-cola brand of other concentrate producers. It also allowed bottlers to choose whether to market new beverages introduced by a concentrate producer. Concentrate producers product cost structure is mostly based on variable costs such as advertising, promotion, market research, and bottler support however, bottler products cost constitution is mostly based on fixed costs and have higher cost leverage. Concentrate producers also took charge of negotiating customer development agreements with nationwide retailers such as Wal-Mart. Concentrate producers collaborated to make more profitable control with bottlers, for example, raw material negotiation with suppliers and sales price

To survive in the global competitive market, most companies keep inventing new products that enable them to remain relevant. Firms compete to create unique products or services that satisfy customer demands through differentiation. Companies can improve on existing products to make them more effective and attractive. Coca Cola founded its company in 1886, with its original recipe; however, due to consumers wants they also created diet, caffeine-free, and special flavored drinks. They created a unique line to enhance their original drink to attract more consumers. In the end, it proves to serve them well to have a wide variety of drinks because in 2016, Coca-Cola’s market cap was $192.80

Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model, provides five competitive forces that impact a company within its environment. Porter’s Five Forces Model provides an assessment of a company’s operating

The market for carbonated soft drinks is saturated with many brands. The top five are, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, and Dr. Pepper (Hartlaub, n.d.). Over 90% of the market is dominated by three companies, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper/Snapple (Statista, 2015) Because the soft drink industry manufactures its products in mass amounts, they can produce economies of scale and create a competitive advantage over smaller or new companies trying to

The Coca Cola Company is a multinational company with more than 140,000 employees, the company is in beverage business and its flagship product Coca Cola is considered one of the best soft drink. Coca Cola soft drink is the real revenue generator of the Coca Cola Company. The company was found in 1892 and by 2010 it was reported that the company has the serving of 1.7 billion per day so the company has only grown since its inception. The company is serving its product in more than 200 countries, and the Coca Cola Company owns more than 500 brands, this shows that the graphs of the company is moving upwards and the Coca Cola Company is growing at an immense rate.

Another important weakness is that the company’s products are seen as a major cause of obesity. (Melser, 2013) The beverage sales are affected by various factors including change in trends and preferences. Recently, beverage sales have fallen because of people’s increased preference for the health drinks. Around the world, obesity is a major problem and the Coca Cola products are seen as a major cause of obesity. As people are getting health conscious they are moving towards low calorie healthy drinks. This affects coca cola’s profitability and popularity. However, the brand can overcome this situation by increasing the number of low calorie products in its brand portfolio. It will need to add more healthy choices for its customers in its product portfolio.