The Impact Of Branding On Organizational Development: A Case Study Of Coca Cola Company

Assessment task 3 requires the preparation of a full project proposal that should contain the following components:

• A detail statement of the problemthat you would like to investigate.
  
  
• Research aim, objectives and research questions: What are the potential research objectives and questions that can address the problem?
  
  
• Justification and potential output of the research project: Why is your chosen project important both theoretically and practically? What are the potential outputs and outcomes of your research?
  
  
• Conceptual framework: An analysis of the literature relevant to the research topic that will give you the conceptual basis for conducting this research.
  
  
• Methodology and presenting secondary data: Based on the conceptual framework, research aim(s) and objectives, you need to provide a detail description of the data collection methods and tools, data sources and the methods/tools that you will use to analyse the data.
  
  
• Organisation of the study, project budget and schedule: Write the names of the chapters/sections of your research report, and briefly discuss what you will write in those chapters/sections followed by a brief description of budget for conducting this study and project schedule i.e., Gantt Chart.

Theory of Effective Branding

The process of branding is usually intended towards creating distinctive name and image for the products in the minds of consumers through effective advertising technique with consistent theme. It aims at establishing significant as well differentiating presence in the market for attracting and retaining loyal customers. In contemporary business environment, branding plays an important character in promoting the products and increasing sales volumes (Xie & Lee, 2015). The popularity of the products is actually enhanced through the help of promotional branding. Effective branding successfully conveys the unique services provided by the organizations to the customers. However, incongruent branding ultimately hampers the brand success of an organization (Sasmita & Mohd Suki, 2015). Hence, the marketing managers of the organizations should always focus on effective branding strategies for proper branding of their organization for organizational development.

This research proposal will explore the impact of branding on organizational development. In order to narrow down the research, this research study will specifically focus on Coca Cola Company. Moreover, the specific focus of the research paper will be on the impact of branding on the organizational development of Coca Cola Company. The research proposal will establish effective research objectives and research question for assembling most significant research information. On the other hand, research proposal will choose appropriate research methodologies for collecting most authentic information regarding the topic of the research

Effective branding facilitates in differentiating the brand image and products of an organization from other competitors in the market. It can cast positive light on the business turnover and business development. However, negative exposure of branding can dismiss the brand esteem and sales volume within few days. The most noteworthy purpose of brand disillusionment is Position Amnesia condition (Davvetas et al., 2015). In this condition, a brand becomes willing to neglect its situation and takes initiatives to cover diverse things within its character. Incongruent courses adopted by organizations can actually lead to negative brand exposure leading to diminished sales volume. The leading beverage company Coca Cola has already been through incongruent branding, while introducing new coke in competition with the (PepsiCo Godey et al., 2016). It has ultimately questioned 50 years long publicity of the organization. 

Research Aim

The aim of the research is to explore the impact of branding on organizational development of Coca Cola Company.

Research Objectives

• To assess the impact of branding on organizational development of Coca Cola Company
• To identify the branding strategies of Coca Cola Company for organizational development
• To recognize the issues associated with the branding of Coca Cola Company
• To suggest the most effective branding strategies for Coca Cola Company

• How branding impacts on organizational development of Coca Cola Company?
• What are the adopted branding strategies of Coca Cola Company for organizational development?
• What are the issues associated with the branding of Coca Cola Company?
• How Coca Cola Company can enhance its branding for better organizational development?

The research proposal is extremely important theoretically as well as practically for enhancing the branding of organizations. Over the years, different scholars have conducted research on the impact of branding on organizational development. Most of the scholars have proved that effective branding can actually differentiate one brand name from other competitor leading to high level of brand success. Proper and right choice of branding strategies can make the customers loyal leading to repetitive sales. Hence, it is also expected that branding will have high level of impact on the organizational development of Coca Cola Company.

Case Study: Coca Cola Company

Concept of Branding

Branding is the marketing practice of creating unique name, symbol and design of a particular brand that differentiates a particular brand from other rivals in the market. Effective branding edge gives a major edge to the organizations in the competitive business environment (Mohseni et al., 2018). Effective advertising can be a powerful tool for creating and shaping a unique brand and convey unique brand feature to the customers. Clear and attractive information communicated through effective branding can attract the customers to purchase a particular brand (Dessart et al., 2015). However, negative exposure of branding can hamper the customer perception regarding a particular brand leading to declining sales volume and negative customer perception.

The new advertising campaign of Coca Cola namely “Enjoy the Feeling” has established new positioning in the competitive market. The organization has included all variants of Coca Cola in this communication. Halkias et al. (2016) pointed out that the Iconic Coca Cola Red Disc has successfully established the trademark and packaging graphic for all variants of Cokes. The unifying color has ensured single visual identity system for all variants of the Coca Cola’s drinks. It helps the customers to easily identify different variants of the organization having signature color. On the other hand, Baxendale et al. (2015) mentioned that fully integrated taste and feeling campaign of Coca Cola can touched the emotional feelings of the consumers. In this way, such creative branding strategies are actually connected with the customers emotionally.

The social media sites of Coca Cola often capture the feel of happiness through the tastes of the cokes. Moreover, Delgado-Ballester and Fernandez Sabiote (2015) stated that the visual style capture the authentic and unscripted moments of the enjoyed by the customers having the taste of Coca Cola’s drinks. In this way, such advertising strategies are highly influential on the influencing the purchasing intension of the customers leading to increased sales volume of the organization. In this way, effective branding strategies actually contribute in the organizational development of Coca Cola Company.

Keller’s brand equity model suggests the ways of building unique brand equity through understanding needs and desires of the customers. The level 1 of this model is associated with brand identity, where the organizations are more inclined towards creating brand salience or brand awareness among the customers. Strong brand identity highly attracts the customers towards purchasing a particular product. In level 2, the organizations mostly communicate the brand meaning to the customers for influencing their purchasing intension. Once the customers become aware of the brand, they want to know about the brand performance for shaping their brand imagery (Winit et al., 2014). Brand imagery enhances the commitment level of the customers towards a particular brand.

Failures of Branding Strategies

Level 3 of this model is associated with the brand response, which is related to the positive feelings of the customers towards a particular brand. In this context, the customers make judgment regarding a brand based on its perceived quality. Hence, the organizations should communicate the relevancy of the brand’s features with the needs and desires of the customers. The 4^th level of Keller’s pyramid assesses the brand resonance associated with a particular brand. The behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty of brand are determined through repeated purchase and special purchase of the customers (Barreda et al., 2015).

Figure 1: Keller’s Brand Equity Model

(Source: Helm & Özergin, 2015)

Effective branding leads to high level of organizational development through increased sales volume. However, Eggers et al. (2016) opined that negative brand exposure can hamper the business growth of the organization. The major issue associated with branding is position amnesia, where a particular brand neglects its position and tries to cover diverse things with its characters. Irrelevant branding strategies adopted through the organizations leads to negative brand affect. In case of Coca Cola Company, the organization has already been suffered through the issue of position amnesia through launching New Coke in competition with the PepsiCo. Through launching New Coke, Coca Cola actually contradicted with the previous marketing efforts, where it spent 50 years for attaching customer emotion with their original products. Hence, this product was actually boycotted and the organization had to bring back their original products. On the other hand, Helm and Özergin (2015) opined that the organizations can often face issues of overconfidence in successfully branding their products. Moreover, some large scale business organization attempt to apply same branding strategies based on their strength and past victories. The overconfidence and extensive use of branding strategies actually leads to failure of branding of even successful barnds. Such issue in branding is also called Icarus paradox. In case of Coca Cola Company, targeting the middle ground and lack of persuasive promotional message led to the failure of Coca-Cola Life brand.

According to Költringer and Dickinger (2015), the new developed advertising campaign has combines both intrinsic benefits of refreshment and taste with extrinsic benefits of authenticity and optimism. Likewise, the persuasive promotional message of Coca Cola Company has combines both intrinsic and extrinsic value of the customers leading to high level of customer attraction. On the other hand, Bilgihan (2016) stated that effective branding impacts on the commitment level of the customers leading them to be attracted to a particular brand. In case of Coca Cola, the organization creates several alternate versions of advertisements, which are actually relevant with the culturally relevant vignettes and locally relevant casts. In this way, the advertising contents of the organization ultimately get attached to the emotional feelings of the global customers. Hence, such branding strategies are highly influential the emotional attachments of the customers with the products of the organization. However, Hajli et al. (2017) argued that negative exposure and offensive banding strategies can ultimately hamper the branding success of the organization. The introduction of New Coke was actually contradictory with the previous promotional efforts of Coca Cola Company. Hence, this brand of Coca Cola faced high level of failure in the beverage industry. Furthermore, Wang et al. (2015) opined that effective branding can move a particular band to the prospective customer groups. Hence, it actually helps in enhancing the customer base of the organizations.

Success of Branding Strategies

Effective branding is dependent on formulation persuasive promotional message through effective advertisements. Moreover, Bilgihan (2016) opined that the communication of persuasive promotional message through advertisements gets connected with the emotional feelings of the customers. Hence, the customers can easily connect the attributes of the brands with their specific needs and desires. On other hand, Davvetas et al. (2015) mentioned that packaging design can become the salient salesman, which can grab the attention of busy customers towards a particular product. It conveys the valuable properties of the brands and visually differentiates a particular brand from others in the competitive business market. As per Godey et al. (2016), visual identity of a particular brand differentiates the brand from other competitors leading to unique brand advantage in attracting the customers and organizational development. Effective pricing can also contribute in the brand enhancement of a particular brand through immediately grabbing the intension of customers and influencing their purchasing intension

Research Approach and Sources of Data

Research approach is an extremely significant method for assembling the data concerning the research topic. The selection of research approach is completely dependent on the topic and associated variables of the research. Two types of research variables are mostly used in conducting research namely inductive and deductive approach. Inductive approach is relied on formulation of new and unique theories and models relevant to the research topic for collecting effective research information. In such approach, known premises are generally used for generating untested conclusion (Lewis, 2015). It facilitates in generalizing the collected information from specific to general. Furthermore, deductive approach facilitates in using previously framed theories and models for gathering most usefully research information. This approach helps in generalizing the collected information from general to specific (Choy, 2014). Inductive approach needs huge time to frame new theories and models. Deductive approach saves the time and budget of the research through allowing the usage of previous theories and models. Hence, this research will use deductive approach for conducting the research.

This research study will also use descriptive research purpose for collecting noteworthy research information. Such research purpose will help in getting actual explanation of the research study. Moreover, such explanation will ultimately accumulate the actual purpose of the research study. Hence, it will be easier to collect most relevant and useful research information, which will actually assist in enhancing the quality of ultimate research outcome. There are mostly two types of data sources in research filed, which are namely primary source and secondary source. However, this research will choose primary source of data for getting highly authentic research information.

Propose Data Collection Method

Data collection is the most important method for gathering noteworthy and authentic information about the research topic. The research will use both sources of data collection namely primary secondary sources of data. Secondary data will be used to construct effective literature review. Such data will mostly be collected from authentic books, journals and websites. However, major focus of the research will be on primary method of data collection. Such method will provide most authentic, first hand and bias free information regarding the topic of the research.

In case of primary data collection, there are two types of data collection techniques, which are namely quantitative and qualitative technique. However, this research study will use only qualitative data collection technique for gathering useful research information (Dumay & Cai, 2015). Such method will provide descriptive data regarding the topic of the research. Moreover, the research study will arrange interview with 5 managers of Coca Cola Company for gathering core organizational information regarding their branding. The managers will provide most authentic and bias free information regarding their branding and its impact on organizational development.

Data analysis technique is extremely important for assessing the actual meaning associated with the data collected from the selected respondents (Lewis, 2015). This research study will apply narrative analysis for analyzing the data collected through the interview with the managers of Coca Cola Company. Such data analysis method will sort out and reflect on the narrative aspect of the interview data. It will ultimately shape and present the collected data to the readers in a meaningful way. It will actually reformulate the stories presented by the managers in different context based on different experience.

1: Introduction: The introduction section will be related with explanation of research background and research problems. The identification of accurate research problems in this chapter will create concrete based of the overall research study. On the other hand, this chapter will also formulate effective research aims, objectives and questions. Such effective research objectives and questions will facilitate to assemble useful research information.

2: Literature Review: This particular chapter will be associated with existing literature and scholarly information relevant to the topic of the research. The main focus of this chapter will be on theoretical underpinning of the research topic. Moreover, the chapter will define various relevant research theories and model of the research topic. Apart from that, this section will also highlight several empirical evidences associated with the research topic, which can enhance the quality of the research outcome.

3: Research Methodology: This chapter will select appropriate research methods for gathering noteworthy research information. Moreover, this section will choose most suitable research approach, research purpose, research strategies, data collection method and data analysis method.

4: Findings and Discussion: This chapter will be associated with collection of data from the selected data collection and finding the actual meaning of the collected data. Proper findings and discussion will lead to most reliable and authentic research result.

5: Conclusion and Recommendation: This section will narrow down the summary of the overall research conducted on the research topic. The chapter will also provide suitable recommendation for resolving the research problem.

Figure 2: Organization of the Study

(Source: Created by Author)

Budget

The budget allocated for the research study is $5500 for its successful completion within the given time frame.

The followings have demonstrated the budget allocation for different research activities:

• Literature Review: The access to the authentic journals, books and websites will cost around $1500
• Purchasing of Data from secondary source: This activity will cost around $2500
• Data Structuring and Data Analysis: This activity will cost around $1000.

Table 1: Estimated Budget for Research

(Source: Created by Author)

Project Activities

Table 2: Activities

(Source: Created by Author

Gantt chart

Figure 3: Gantt chart

(Source: Created by Author)

References

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Choy, L. T. (2014). The strengths and weaknesses of research methodology: Comparison and complimentary between qualitative and quantitative approaches. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 19(4), 99-104.

Davvetas, V., Sichtmann, C., & Diamantopoulos, A. (2015). The impact of perceived brand globalness on consumers' willingness to pay. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 32(4), 431-434.

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