Coca-Cola Marketing Mix: Product, Place, Price, Promotion

Product:

In order for an organization to be successful it needs to have a well-defined marketing mix. The marketing mix consists of the four P’s; product, place, price, promotion (Hair, Lamb, & McDaniel, 2006, p. 48). Product is defined as “everything, both favorable and unfavorable, that a person receives in exchange” (Hair, Lamb, & McDaniel, 2006, p. 48). The Coca-Cola Company’s products consist of beverage concentrates and syrups, with the main product being the finished beverages (Coca-Cola Datamonitor, 2007). Coca-Cola’s products can be viewed as both business and consumer products. Ultimately, the main goal of the Coca-Cola Company’s is to satisfy a consumer’s …show more content…

The distributors and retail stores that the Coca-Cola Company deals with often implement their own pricing strategy (Coca-Cola Datamonitor, 2007). Gas stations and convenient stores usually sell Coca-Cola products at a fixed price. However, the retail outlets use a variety of pricing methods and strategies when selling Coca-Cola products (Coca-Cola Datamonitor, 2007). There is often competition pricing of the Coca-Cola products and prices are set around the same level as its competitors. In addition there are also psychological pricing strategies that are used to make consumers perceive that the products are cheaper than they really are.

Promotion:

The fourth aspect of the marketing mix is promotion of a product. The promotions role in the marketing mix is to “bring about mutually satisfying exchanges with target markets by informing, educating, persuading, and reminding them of the benefits of an organizations product” (Hair, Lamb, & McDaniel, 2006, p. 49). Since the Coca-Cola Company operates on a global scale, their promotional strategy needs to consider the external environment in which their products are. These external environmental factors include culture, economic and technological development, political structure, demographic makeup and natural resources (Hair, Lamb, & McDaniel, 2006, p. 77). For example, the Coca-Cola Company promoted its new Coke Zero in Australia differently than it did in the United States because of the