Professional Documents
Culture Documents
On
MARKETING
MANAGEMENT
OF
SUBMITTED BY:
ARCHIT SHANKAR
74/BBA/JIMSG/2000
CONTENTS
TOPICS PAGES
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background and History of the Coca Cola 5
System
1.1.1 Coca Cola in India 10
1.1.2 Present profile of Coca Cola and its future 11
plans in India
1.1.3 The 3 A’s Strategy 14
1.1.4 The Manufacturing Process of Coca Cola 15
Brands
1.1.5 Objectives of the Project 17
1.1.6 Need of the Project and its Significance 18
1.1.7 Scope of the Project - Extent and Limitations 20
Chapter Two Research Methodology
2.1 Research Design 21
2.2 Data Collection Sources 21
2.3 Data Collection Methods and Instruments 22
2.4 Sampling Plan 24
Chapter Three Findings and Analysis
3.1.1 Findings from Questionnaire 26
3.1.2 General Findings from the Market 33
3.1.3 Analysis 36
Chapter Four Conclusions and
Recommendations
4.1 Conclusions
4.2 Recommendations 40
Bibliography
Appendix
Questionnaire for Consumers of Soft Drinks 42
Slogans Used to Advertise Coca Cola over the Years 45
Fun-facts 46
LIST OF TABLES AND GRAPHS
Tables
Field Work Schedule
Favourite Soft Drink according to Age Group and
Gender
Coca Cola’s Bottling Plants All over India
Graphs
Favourite Soft Drink
Favourite Soft Drink according to Age Group and
Gender
Most Preferred form of Packaging
Second Favourite Soft Drink
Advertisements Play a Major Role in the Buying
Process
Sales (in cases) in 2001 – 2002
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude towards the helpful staff at Coca-
Cola India.
Through this project I have not only come across with the complexities of the
corporate world but also realized that how smartly these people work. Working for
this project has familiarized me with how the market works and the inherent
importance of advertising and research.
The project was a great source of learning and value addition for me. It has
opened me to the world of realities.
ARCHIT SHANKAR
Jagannath International Management School
Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University
SYSTEM:
“Coca Cola stands today as the second most widely understood term in
the world after ‘Okay’.” ( Richard Tedlow, New and Improved : The
come a long way since Dr. John Styth Pemberton invented it in 1886 to
Cola to the international market, He had set three goals for the
company viz.,
• Trained Personnel
• Customer Service
• Quality Product.
Even after 80 years these three goals are still part of the formula for
success. Mr. Robert W. Woodruff also had a vision i.e. “To place Coca
i . ex e
Coca Cola
Coca-Cola India comes under the Middle and Far East Group. Each
group within the International Business sector has its unique challenges
regions, the same basic rules for achievement apply. Quality products,
success.
5.8 billion people in the world, and each and every person gets thirsty
Associated Beverages Pvt. Ltd.
7
Coca Cola
for one time or the other. Each and every time they do, Coca-Cola has
people all over the world and in doing so, translate thirst into tangible
results.
But how did Coca-cola achieve such great heights with such a simple
need: They sell a product with physical attributes that the human
accounts for not even 2 ounces. For every person on this planet
come from, is
value in the market place; to inspire people to pay more for it.
First, their capital requirements are very low for a business of their
a matter of hours.
Coca Cola believes that everybody should get value from it-the bottling
partners, customers and ultimately people who buy and drink their
product. They strive very hard to ensure that they are different.
quality; and four, by linking the brand with one-of-a- kind events
(1996) etc.
not see Coca Cola; they see where Coca Cola is not. They see an
Coca Cola returned to India on the 24th October, 1993 after 16 years of
absence. The city of Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal and for many the
most enduring image of India, was chosen as the symbolic location for
the re-launch.
In India almost 96% of the soft drinks market is controlled by Coca Cola
and Pepsi. Coca Cola has a share of 47.8% and Pepsi 47.3% of the
Rs. 3,000 crore Indian soft drinks market. Between Coke and Pepsi
PLANS IN INDIA:
1st January and 31st May which is a 30% jump in volumes over the
same period last year. Individually also Coca Cola has grown by 48%,
Thums Up has gone up by 33%, Limca has risen by 23%, and Fanta
rival Cola giant Pepsi has grown by an impressive 42%. At this pace
Coca Cola hopes to close the year with around 128 million cases while
Also an ORG - MARG survey conducted for Coca-Cola shows that the
the figures were - 21.6% were aware of Coke and 33.7% knew about
Pepsi, In March 1998, the gap had filled further with 32% aware of
Between 1993, when Coca Cola acquired the Parle Soft Drinks
Division, and 1997, its overall market share had dropped from a
comfortable 69% to 51% while Pepsi zoomed from a paltry 17% to 40%
during the same period. Pepsi’s gains came from market growth and a
these brands has a character of its own. Thumbs Up has the macho
image targeted towards the 20-29 year olds; Fanta is the ‘fun drink’ the
first love of 13-19 year olds and Limca has the ‘take it easy’ image. The
brands Coca Cola, Thums Up, Limca and Fanta have been identified as
either join hands or sell out . Of the 52 bottlers in India only 12 have
formed joint ventures so far and that two mainly in the south. Another
system.
The Coca Cola company works with bottler partners all around the
world to create effective operating units at the local levels. The ties that
For the bottle or can beverage system, the ingredients are pre-mixed
and the beverage is ready to drink. This beverage system includes
returnable glass bottles of 300 ml (RGB) and cans. The glass bottles
are cleaned and rinsed.
The soft drink business in India is worth more than Rs. 3,000 crores.
Between April and July almost 50% of the annual sales take place. In
the northeast of India almost 60% of the sales take place in these four
months of the year. Also, Guwahati, the gateway to the northeast, is
solely responsible for 60% of the annual sales of Associated Beverages
Private Limited.
One of the values of the Coca Cola system is presence - that Coca
Cola should exist everywhere and should be available to anyone who
wants a drink, whenever and wherever, on this planet. To fulfill this
goal just producing high quality products is not sufficient. An effective
distribution system holds the key to this ultimate goal. Distribution
includes the activities of sales delivery, merchandising and local
account management.
purchases. This means that when the consumer enters a retail outlet
∗ Availability
∗ Visibility
purchase.
But the very first factor of ‘availability’ is a major problem in the Delhi
market. But this is not the case in all parts of the city. During the peak
summer season parts of the city simply go dry and remain so for days
together. At the same time other parts of the city has ample stock.
brand’s image, not to say the effect it has on the sales of the company.
traditional arch rival Pepsi. This is because the only bottling plant of
this is the only reason why Pepsi has no visible presence in Delhi and
why it has not been able to penetrate into the strong Coca Cola market.
But now Pepsi is setting up a bottling plant in Rani, very close to Delhi
which will have the same capacity as the Coca Cola plant. This bottling
plant which is due to start operations in September 1998, will then cater
than Pepsi will certainly succeed in eating into a sizable chunk of the
Coca-Cola market.
Beverages Private Limited so that they do not lose out its strong hold
on the Delhi market when their arch rival Pepsi enters the battle field.
brands.
This project is limited only to the Delhi market of Coca Cola and studies
only the distribution network within the city. It does not study any other
market to its distribution. But Delhi being itself responsible for 60% of
the total annual sales of the company this project is of some
significance and can be said to be somewhat representative of the
whole northeast of India.
Moreover, this study relates only to the urban consumer and as such
has no relevance to the psyche of the rural consumer. As such this
project is limited only to the urban market of Coca Cola.
Also, one of the brands of the company viz. Bisleri Club Soda does not
come under the scope of this project as its target market is totally
different from the soft drinks market.
This project covers all the twelve distributors and the retail outlets under
the company within Delhi city.
The data collection method for this project begins with finding a sample
of the population. The population for this project was the entire Delhi
and finding a fairly representative sample of this population can never
be perfect.
At the very beginning the whole market was divided into twelve zones
each having one distributor of Coca Cola and samples proportionate to
the number of retailers the distributor caters to are taken. Again from
each distributor zone the sample taken was at random. There was no
set pattern to select a sample. Moreover, there may be a bias in the
findings, since a majority chunk of the sample were consumers at the
point-of-purchase in market places, parks, cinema halls etc. The
distributors all over the Delhi has 7920 retailers under them, which
include pan-Walla’s, school canteens, institutional or office canteens
etc. The distributors do not serve equal number of retailers individually.
Keeping this in mind the sample size taken from each distributor zone
is proportionate to the number of retailers in each zone.
Informal and friendly conversation also allows the mask, that one wears
when doing business, to be dropped to accommodate free flow of
thoughts and ideas. By going to the market and just watching how a
consumer buys a Coca Cola and how a retailer sells it, one can get a
good idea of the operations of the market also.
The sampling plan was basically random. The sample size chosen was
450 consumers of soft drinks from all over the Delhi city. This sample
size was divided into twelve distributor zones, each zone being the
allotted area to be covered by a distributor. Since, the distributors
within their respective zones serve different number of retailers the
division of samples to the twelve zones cannot be equal. the number of
samples out of the 450 samples to be chosen from each distributor
zone is proportionate to the number of retailers within the parameter of
each zone. All the distributor zones have a total of 7920 retailers.
Similarly for distributor zones having around 1000 retail outlets the
number of respondents chosen was 55 and so on. This way each
distributor zone was represented in a fairly representative manner. But
even then, a bias will be there as the number of consumers being
served by all the retailers are not equal and in some cases there are
vast differences. Due to the non availability of the figures of the exact
consumer size covered by each retailer this bias is inevitable.
Also the respondents chosen were mostly near points-of -purchase with
a soft drink bottle in one hand. These respondents were chosen at
random from parks and recreation centres such as cinema halls etc.
Out of the 450 soft drink consumers surveyed 121 voted Thums Up
as their favourite soft drink, which is 26,8%
110 respondents voted Coca Cola as their favourite soft drink, which
is 24.4%
Fanta and Mirinda were very close to each other with 54 (12%) and
52 (11.5%) of the respondents respectively naming these two
brands as their favourite
12 of the respondents 92.6%) voted for other brands such as frooti,
onjus etc.
Others
Limca
2.6% Coca-Cola
9.3%
Mirinda 24.4%
11.5%
Fanta Pepsi
12%
13.1%
Thums-Up
26.8%
Males Females
Age Group less than 20 20-40 above 40 Less than 20 20-40 above 40
(in years)
Coca Cola 31 23 10 21 17 8
Pepsi 16 12 5 11 9 6
Thums Up 34 25 11 22 19 10
Fanta 15 11 5 10 8 5
Mirinda 14 11 5 9 9 4
Limca 12 9 4 8 7 2
Others 3 3 1 3 2 0
Total 125 94 41 84 71 35
35
30
25
20
Ma les les s th an 20
Ma les 20-4 0
15
Ma les abov e 4 0
10
0
Coc a- Cola Peps i Thums - Up Fan ta Mir inda Limc a O th er s
25
20
15
Fe ma le s le s s th a n 2 0
Fe ma le s 2 0 - 4 0
10 Fe ma le s a b o v e 4 0
0
Co c a - Co la Pe p s i Th u ms - Up Fa n ta Mir in d a L im c a O th e r s
65 respondents (14.4%) preferred the one and a half litre carry away
PET bottles to other forms of packaging.
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Returnable Pet bolltles Can
Cans
glass
bottles
204 respondents preferred their favourite soft drinks for its taste /
flavour (45.3%)
Brand Image is the second most important criteria for being the
favourite as 136 respondents (30.2%) have to say
Limca
Mirinda 9.3% Coca-Cola
7.8% 24.6%
Fanta
13.4%
Pepsi
Thums-Up
24.6%
20.1%
%
250
200
150
100
50
0
S tr o n g ly A gree N e u tr a l D is a g r e e S tr o n g ly
agree d is a g r e e
The sales figures (in number of cases) for Delhi for 2001 – 2002 are
as follows :
310000
305000
300000
295000
290000
285000
280000
275000
270000
265000
260000
2001 2002
Pepsi products were found only in a few outlets whereas Coca Cola
products had its presence all over the city.
But at the same time Coca Cola products sometimes were visible
only as empty cases in parts of the city with stock running out while
other parts of the city had ample stock. This condition of parts of the
city going dry while other parts were amply stocked sometimes
continued for a week.
The most common answer to this problem given by the retail outlets
to the consumers was “ no supply ”. This means that the company
has not been able to produce and supply as per the existing demand
of the market.
The Burnihat bottling plant had a capacity of filling 120 bottles per
minute which was doubled in 2001 to 240 bottles per minute.
Beside this plant, there is one more bottling plant of Coca Cola
products in Jorhat, in upper Assam. But, it does not have bottling
facilities for Coca Cola and Fanta. It caters only to Jorhat district and
parts of Nagaland bordering Assam.
The most important piece of news for Coca-Cola in Delhi is that its
archrival Pepsi is setting up a bottling plant at Rani, in the outskirts of
Delhi with a capacity equivalent to the Burnihat plant. This plant at
Rani, which is planned for commencement of operations from
September/October 1998, will then cater to the whole soft drinks
market of the Northeast. The competition after commencement of
operations of the Pepsi plant is bound to get heated up.
3.1.3 ANALYSIS
Thums Up 26.8%
Coca Cola 24.4%
Pepsi 13.1%
Fanta 12%
Mirinda 11.5%
Limca 9.3%
Others 2.6%
Taste/flavour and brand image are the two most important factors
why Coca Cola products are purchased with 45.3% and 30.2%
respondents voting for it.
By looking for new sales opportunities, the sales person can help
the retailer improve his business. For example, the salesperson
might identify opportunities for the retailer to sell more products or
consider what additional product consumers may want.
The above two systems were direct distribution system. The other
form of distribution system wherein an organisation which is not
part of Coca Cola system i.e. the distributor, has control over the
elements of distribution viz. delivery, merchandising and local
account management
4.1 RECOMMENDATIONS
It is now high time for the company to chalk out a strategy to battle
Pepsi because all this time Pepsi did not offer any sort of
competition to Coca Cola. The company now need to pull up its
socks and start setting its house in order, as Pepsi is about to make
a big entry into the Delhi market.
Respondent’s Name
Sex: Age: Occupation:
Please tick your choice or answer wherever necessary:
1. Which is your favourite soft drink?
(a) Coca-Cola (e) Mirinda
(b) Pepsi (f) Limca
(c) Thums Up (g) Others (please specify)
(d) Fanta
6. In case you do not find your favourite soft drink with your retailer
do you buy any other alternative?
4.2: CONCLUSION
The Rs. 3,000 crore soft drink businesses in India score its biggest hit-
almost 50% of all soft drink sales - between April and June. And it is
during this period that the Delhi market goes dry from time to time.
70% of soft drink sales is through impulsive buying i.e. the consumer
comes to the retail outlet without any intention to buy but on impulse
actually purchase a soft drink. To promote these purchasing two
factors are very important. They are :
∗ Availability
∗ Visibility
If even one of these factors is lacking then a big chunk of sales can be
lost. In Delhi the following deficiencies need to be rectified by Coca-
Cola to retain and increase its present market share:
The basic ingredients like sugar and carbon dioxide is brought all
the way from Calcutta and the flow of goods is not smooth because
of the volatile political and highly militant atmosphere of the
northeastern region.
The communication gap between the supplier and bottler can prove
costly if its frequency increases during the peak season.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Business India
India Today
Marketing Management
By Philip Kotler
Research Methodology
By C.R. Kothari
PREFACE
Signature