Decoding Coca-Cola Success: Consumer Behavior Strategies Explored - Free Essay

Coca-Cola is one of the worldwide most well-known brands in the world. The Coca-Cola company which has branches in close to 200 countries around the world made sure that various homesteads tasted and knew their brand by understanding the consumer behavior and taking this to their advantage to increase sales of their product (Cola and Schweppes, 2014). A deep and careful analysis is, therefore, to be done on the coca color brand to understand how it became a successful brand and how it properly made use of the consumer behavior knowledge that it had (Cola and Schweppes, 2014).

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In 1892, the Coca-Cola company was founded to produce the Coca-Cola drink which was first considered as a medical substance for various ailments but after the removal of cocaine from the initial drink (Cola and Schweppes, 2014). The drink was now safe for drinking and currently engaged in the manufacture and sale of beverages that are sweetened and carbonated and is used by a very large population around the world. Back then the sale of the Coca-Cola drink was not easy since ways of advertising the product were limited but the advantageous part was it was the only available beverage in some various parts of the country the company was located in (Cola and Schweppes, 2014). Sales increased later when the company came together with a bottling company that helped advertise the product (Clee and Wicklund, 1980).

Currently, the Coca-Cola company has devised very fruitful ways of advertisements that make the coke drink well known around the world. First, the Coca-Cola company was very creative in every advertisement they made (Cola and Schweppes, 2014). The Coca-Cola song which was sung around the world was a smart and very creative move made by the company to advertise the coke drink since the song was appealing and heartwarming to the societal values at that time. This was a very great advantage to the company in the next generation since grandparents narrated their experiences with the Coca-Cola drink which was full of happiness, connectivity, and unity hence campaigning to make the company grow even larger in this generation (Cola and Schweppes, 2014).

The company furthermore used the World Cup in the advertisement by being the biggest sponsor of the world cup and then narrating the Coca-Cola story to the world. It acted as the company for people by people by creating content that was so emotional and that truly celebrated the power of football in changing communities and lives while advertising its brand in the tale. Also, the vending machines introduced by the Coca-Cola company made the brand even more known around the world (Ho et al., 2006).

People would hug the vending machines and the company took advantage of this by capturing these joyful moments and then publicly showing them to the world then vividly explaining to them how Coca-Cola spreads joy among people (Ho et al., 2006). The action enticed people and made people want to experience the same joy shown in the advertisements by buying the Coca-Cola drink. Coca-cola company-sponsored various events around the world, from giving opportunities to the talented in disadvantaged societies around the world to sponsoring sports clubs of various sports as a way of making their brand known to many people. Making their brand recognized by many people around the would-be made it easy to increase sales since a strong visual identity was created (Ho et al., 2006).

As part of advertisements, the Coca-Cola company adopted strict measures that helped in fighting off competition. First, their logo used a timeless font which was written in Spenserian script accountants to differentiate them from their competitors. Even though their recipe changed with time, the logo was to be untouched (Cola and Schweppes, 2014). The action is because they wanted the logo to be imprinted in people’s minds after staying for over a hundred years. The company distributed its drinks in a proprietary bottle after losing market share to many of its competitors because of poor bottles (Clee and Wicklund, 1980).

These proprietary bottles were so unique and attractive since they had a good shape and a logo of the company on the body. The bottle further promoted the image of the company since every person taking the Coke could see the logo. Coca-Cola companies also use celebrities to advertise their product (Serôdio et al., 2018). This currently is done by the company sponsoring the celebrities who are very influential video songs, these celebrities publicly notify their fans that the Coke drink produced by the Coca-Cola company is the best beverage and that every fun should try it (Clee and Wicklund, 1980). This is usually done on televisions, radios, billboards, or even the internet where the videos are uploaded and viewed. Moreover, coca-cola printed shirts, roadshows, organized events and many more greatly increased the brand's name (Faison, 1977).

Before the Coca-Cola company decides to apply certain advertisement methods, it learns the behavior of consumers and then finally implements the best option taking into consideration the age, sex, and population of the target group. Their main target group was the youth aged 35 to 45 as they formed a larger population of the world and also were a lively group who had fun in many things that they did (Faison, 1977). Some of the theories of psychological consumer behavior used to find the right advertisement media that would help increase sales of the brand are discussed.

The Veblenian Social-Psychological Model

The theory is that a man is perceived to be a social person who conforms to the beliefs of a larger culture and his needs are molded by the membership of the present group. The action implies that a consumer can easily be influenced by a larger population of consumers taking the same Coca-Cola. This public influence increases sales of the coca-cola (Hanse et al., 2008).

Pavlovian Theory

The model mainly emphasizes the repetition of advertising the Coca-Cola brand so many times since when it is advertised only once it is most probably going to be a weak cue that cannot adequately arouse the consumer’s consciousness to want to buy the Coca-Cola drink (Hanse et al., 2008). Also, repetition of advertising the Coca-Cola brand has two major merits which are; fighting forgetting that the Coca-Cola brand exists and providing reinforcements as the consumer of the Coca-Cola product becomes more exposed to advertisements of that particular brand purchased (Hanse et al., 2008).

Freudian Theory

The theory explains how the human being is born with instincts and uncontrollable urges. Coca-Cola marketers should therefore know and understand economic and functional product concerns. For example, the change of different bottling techniques from a glass bottle to a metallic can or plastic cans. This difference in these bottling techniques has both functional and economic reasons (Faison, 1977). The economic reason part of it is that it is cheaper for the company to produce plastic or metallic cans than to produce a glass bottle while the functional reason is that, glasses are so fragile that in case of accidents, they could break and all the beverages in it would be spilled. But in the case of plastic bottles or cans, they can withstand impacts that may be caused by accidents and hence no waste of the beverage (Faison, 1977).

Theory of Reasoned Action

The theory centers its findings on the significance of pre-existing attitudes in the process of decision-making. The main reason for coming up with this theory was that consumers of a particular beverage act on behavior based on their specific intentions to receive or create a particular outcome. Therefore, the action means that the consumers are actors who are based on choosing to act in their best interest (Hands, 2010). A consumer can only take a specific action, if and only if there are equal specific expected results. The consumer retains the ability to change their mind and choose a different action from the time the consumer chooses to act to the time the main action is completed (Serôdio et al., 2018).

The Coca-Cola Company, therefore, learned this theory, and when marketing products to the consumer, they associate a purchase with a positive result which is specific. Furthermore, the long lag between the initial intention of the consumer and the completion of the action should be understood it gives the consumer plenty of time to talk themselves out of purchasing a product (Mullen and Johnson, 2013).

Motivation Need Theory

Abraham Maslow came up with this theory and under his theory, he explained that people act to fulfill their personal needs on a priority system that has 5 parts which are love, safety, in order of importance which is physiological survival, self-actualization, and esteem (Mullen and Johnson, 2013). Awareness of the product must not be the only thing successful marketing campaigns do. It needs to establish a place somewhere on the five hierarchy of needs since consumers are motivated to prioritize purchases towards the hierarchy. Therefore, it is very important that the Coca-Cola company draft messages that instill a sense of urgency or need in these consumers (Mullen and Johnson, 2013).

Hawkins Stern Impulse Buying

The theory is unique from the other theories since it deals with the idea of impulse behavior while the other theories focus on rational actions. Stern the person who developed the theory reasoned that sudden buying impulses go hand in hand with rational buying decisions to come up with a complete picture of the average consumer (Hansen, 1976). External stimuli are the main drivers of impulse buying of things and have no relationship to traditional decision-making.

The consumer behavior theories to see how these consumers will make decisions of purchase and vividly show marketers how best to utilize fully these predictable behaviors (Hansen, 1976). When a person goes to purchase a Coca-Cola brand, the consumer may end up purchasing a lot of items from that brand that he initially never intended to. This is an increase in sales for the Coca-Cola company as it has taken advantage of the impulsive instincts of the consumer (Hansen, 1976).

Routinized Response Behavior

The theory is that the consumer has well-established beliefs and knowledge based on brands like the Coca-Cola brand and that enough information and experience with the brand will avoid any confusion that might be there between the Coca-Cola brand and any other brand that might be there. This consumer will thus have no other alternative but to purchase that one particular brand that he or she is too conversant with (Hansen, 1976).

Engel, Kollet, Blackwell Model

The model lays out many step-by-step processes that the consumers of the brand use while buying. It begins with input where consumers absorb various marketing materials they see or hear in advertisement media like television, radio, billboards newspapers, or even online (Hands, 2010). After collecting this data, the consumer moves to processing the information which involves comparing input from previous experiences and the future expectations wanted. They then decide after a period of thought, to make a purchase basing rational insights (Hands, 2010). The Coca-Cola company based on the Engel, Kollet, and Blackwell model has to provide enough information to their consumer to entice them to purchase the product willingly. The company can also influence the consumer to entrust the brand by the use of external influences. Since the Coca-Cola brand is a brand loved by most people, the external influence might be therefore easy for the company (Hands, 2010).