Marketing
Coco Cola Amatil offers a diversified product portfolio including carbonated soft drinks, water, sports and energy drinks, alcoholic beverages, fruit juice, coffee and packaged ready to eat fruit and vegetable products. CCA is one of the largest bottlers of non-alcoholic ready to drink beverages in the Asia Pacific region and one of the six major coca-cola bottlers in the world. Coca Cola Amatil spends over $750 million every year on sales, promotion and distribution. The company has a specific number of marketing objectives which include: continuing to grow carbonated soft drink sales through new packaging and increased product availability and broadening the company’s product mix through increasing sales of non-carbonated beverages such a fruit juice and bottled water. Coca Cola Amatil’s broad product range means the company produces beverages that cater to the tastes of almost all consumer groups. However the company markets products to individual consumer groups on factor such as age, interests and lifestyle. In addition to market segmentation CCA applies the “Four Ps”- Product, Price, Promotion, and Place to its products.
Product
Coca Cola offers a huge amount of choice to potential customers, with a variety of drinks to suit the needs of individuals. CCA uses product differentiation to tailor its beverages to meet the needs of consumers. For example, this has led to the introduction of new soft drink flavours such a Diet Coke with Lemon, Vanilla Coke and Cherry Coke. The introduction of new products has also differentiated CCA’s product range from competitors as none of which offer a comprehensive range of flavour choices.
Price
The soft drink industry is highly competitive and only a relatively small number of businesses account for soft drink sales. In this environment CCA must take into account competitor’s prices when setting their own price. The strong brand of CCA soft drinks often allows the company to charge a slightly higher price than its competitors for similar products.
Promotion
Advertising is a key element in any promotional campaign. While advertisements featuring CCA’s products are visible in many forms of media such a television, radio and billboards CCA has little control over these campaigns are these are the sole responsibility of The Coca Cola Company (TCCC). Free samples and product giveaways are another form of promotion that CCA use regularly. Product giveaways usually coincide with the launch of a new product, this allowing the product to achieve widespread recognition in a short period of time.
Place
CCA sells its products through a number of distribution channels. Some of these channels involve vending machines which are a direct distribution to consumers. However, the vast majority of sales are generated through intermediaries such as supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores allowing CCA to further expose its products.
Employment Relations
CCA currently employs more than 15,000 people and has access to 265 million consumers through over 700,000 active customers. The recruitment process is moderately straightforward. Positions can be found and applied for online. A psychological process may be used to narrow down the correct applicant for the job, which can consist of a number of different components including verbal and numerical testing. At CCA good development consists of 70% on the job experience, 20% exposure and 10% attending courses. CCA focuses their efforts on recognising the role that customers, consumers and the community play in ensuring the business is sustainable at every level. CCA places great importance on ethical and legal aspects of employment relations and has introduced a number of policies to guarantee the health and safety and to ensure the company provides a discriminate free workplace. CCA has introduced comprehensive occupational health and safety policy for all its workplaces and has also introduced a Working Together Policy to eliminate discriminatory work practices.
Financial
As of the 31st December 2009 Australia’s trading revenue was at 2,759.4 million. Carbonated beverages were 56% of the market share followed by bottled water which had 45% of the market share. The net profit for the first six months of 2010, was a record net profit of 212.7 million. From the years of 2006 to 2009 there has been a dramatic increase of 166.6 million in net profit. The Australian beverages business delivered another excellent result in 2010, with earnings before interest and tax up 9.6% from the previous year at a price of $272.8 million. The strong result was delivered despite the less favourable consumer environment experienced that year. The brand delivered volume growth of almost 3%, from new pack options including the 450mL grip bottle, portion control packs and frozen coke. In 2006 CCA’s managing director, Terry Davis announced three core financial objectives for the company which included earning growth of 10-25 percent per annum, earnings per share growth of 12-15 per cent per annum and return on capital growth of 1-15 per cent per annum.
Conclusion
Through the use of the four key business functions; operations, marketing, employment relations and financial aspects CCA has developed a successful company that continues to grow. The choice of factory locations has ensured CCA is able to efficiently deliver to its product to distribution channels. CCA’s marketing strategy has achieved great results in recent years and the company is the leading carbonated soft drink producer in every country it operates. CCA has also achieved sound financial achievement performance in recent years and the company’s management team is continually searching for ways to faster growth and boost profitability. Their swift response to changing influences on employment relations allows CCA to further its organisational goals while maintaining effective employee relationships. Overall, CCA must continue to respond to changing businesses developments to maintain its high success in the future.
