How To Write An Executive Summary For A Marketing Plan And Coca Cola In Canada: A Situational Analysis

The executive summary of any report is written last – after the rest of the report is completed. It is a critical element of a marketing plan because it is read in detail by all senior marketers and other decision-makers in your firm. Use this worksheet to outline the key content that will be included in your executive summary. Here are some general “rules of thumb” guidelines to follow when writing:

• The executive summary must be brief – in this case, a 2 PowerPoint slides right after the table of contents in your marketing plan.
• Paragraphs should be short and to the point. Senior managers can read the attached document if they want proof points.
• You should state the key actions you must take for the plan to be successful.
• State your planned revenue (sales).

An example of an executive summary for a marketing plan is included at the end of this worksheet.

1)Statement of Purpose: Briefly describe the purpose of the document.

The purpose of this marketing plan is to describe the marketing environment, strategy and financial forecasts for the launch of our new branded product,

2)Key Findings: Briefly identify the 5-7 things that senior managers need to know about your research, and put these in brief paragraphs. This information is drawn from your target market profile, positioning and situation analysis.

3)Recommendations: Briefly identify the key marketing mix strategies (product, price, place & promotion) you need to implement for the plan to be successful.

Gourmet Chocolat Creations is the latest chocolate range put forward by the R & D Department of Hivert’s Trait au Chocolat. The report evaluates this range and concludes that it would be an ideal candidate to meet the challenge presented by the market and could satisfy the new consumer demand since it uses significantly reduced milk and sugar ingredients and is endorsed by renowned health experts. According to 97% of the 2000 subjects tested recently, it also retains the same flavour as the original range.

Hivert’s Trait au Chocolat take immediate measures to launch and promote Gourmet Chocolat Creations alongside its existing product range;Gourmet Chocolat Creations adopt a fresh and healthy image;

That part of the launch campaign contains product endorsement statements by renowned health experts;

Gourmet Chocolat Creations be available in health food shops as well as in traditional chocolate retail outlets

Coca Cola’s Product Line

Coca Cola Company in Canada was initially established in 1886. In this period Dr John Pemberton sold one drink to his potential consumers at 5 cents. From this period the company stood up dominating within soft drink global market with a workforce of about 700,000 and carried along around 500 brands in the market (William, S. & Hein, 2010). The industry covers international regions whereas in the region of operations the company establishes itself as a domestic firm, as well as that in Canada. From 1936, Coca Cola Company has been in Canada, although its commercial existence in the country was set up in 1979 through the licensing of its supply and bottling channels by the local corporate partners who are the F&N (Kraus, 2018)..

The Coca Cola Company has a vast product line with the company’s product portfolio comprising of about 3,500 produced in the Canadian industry. With Inca Kola and the BonAqua water which are produced in Canada, thus showing the vast range of product line produced by the company in other global markets (George , 2008, p. 344). The primary products produced by the Coca Cola Company in Canada include: The Dasani water, Splice, & Mexican Coke, Minute Maid, Bacardi Mixers Fruitopia, Flavored Cokes such as Cherry and Vanilla, Barq’s Root Beer, Powerade, Nestea, Tahiti Treat, and the Mello Yello.

In this section the paper specifically focuses on the internal and the external factor which influences the Coca Cola’s business within the Canadian environment. Thus it is essential for marketer keenly evaluate the company’s internal and external features of the company as well as the environmental changes that occur within the business. Close evaluation of the business’s impacts of the environmental changes will result to growth and endurance of the company in the market. The internal business environment is said to be within the company’s reach thus it can be easily manageable by the company managerial system (Arab, 2018). Therefore the main aspects which should be instituted within the Coca Cola industry are improving on the production rates, which are aided through quality communication and managerial skills.

Demographic forces – Within the demographic segment, the coca cola market share is always sub-divided into various segments centered in different variables such as social class, occupation, religion, family status, level of education, age, nationality, and generation. Demographical factors are important considerations which should be pointed out in order to differentiate the company’s customers. This is due to the fact that consumer consumption rates, and taste & preference are always linked to the stated demographic variables. Additionally, it is much easier for Coca Cola Company to carry out demographical analysis through the use of surveys and questionnaires which enables obtain a proper segmentation analysis.

Socio-cultural forces – Social factors are highly valued in the process of structuring the Coca Cola Company’s marketing plan. This will be initiated through the enactment of the Coca Cola Zero brand which will be suitable in satisfying the needs of the 21^st century consumers. Additionally, providing sport and bottled water can be an awesome strategy to be used by the company. In order for the Canadian Coca Cola company to maintain its current position in the market place it must uphold its current healthy standards outlined within the company’s product line.

Situation Analysis

Economic forces – Since Canada is presently facing a substantial economic decline, various factors such as higher inflation, increased unemployment rates, rising cost of living are encountered thus making most consumers experience reduced disposable wages thus influencing their buying abilities. Due to the linkage of bottling company all around the world, which influences the distribution levels of beverages.

Technological forces – basically technology plays a major role in any business process. Therefore huge business such as the Coca Cola Company should endow their attention on technological advancement in order to be effective, and in due course will be great rivals in the marketplace. Technologically, the company should focus on advancing in the company’s sales recording and monitoring, the supply chain and the manufacturing process which will eliminate external technological dangers.

Competitive forces – There has been vast disparity within Coca Cola tastes and consumer needs over time. As a result of much attention on the health standards and high nutritional levels such as obesity majority of customers are developing dissimilar characters and choices if products. Due to this reason bottled water, energy drinks and tea is upheld compared to the normal soft drinks. This tends to be a major danger affecting the Coca Cola Company, since the vast change in consumer tastes and preferences have significantly led to the emanation of huge number of rivals in the soft drink industry (Noe, 2013).

Regulatory forces – On the other hand regulatory forces can highly impact on the Coca Cola environment greatly due to various legislations enacted pertaining food and beverages handling. Advocates are currently working hard for the Canadian government to institute laws regarding product labeling and promotion in the soft drink industry. Due to the fact that there is vast number of policies regarding this issue, additional implementation of any other law could lead to a downturn of the company’s profit and thus increase its expenses.

Since the situational analysis has been handled in the prior section, with the Canadian Coca Cola Company product line achieved this section will entirely focus on the company target market. Thus based on the situation analysis it is thus seen that the main target market of the Canadian Coca Cola Company is vast and thus gratifies many needs of the Canadian people, varying from the health standards of individuals through the introduction of Diet Coke. Generally, Coke foodstuffs always make happy many people based in the age levels since according to research analysis it is postulated that many Coca Cola users love using Coke (Mokhov & Ryabukhin, 2018). Consequently, soft drink industry is harbors many participants thus creating allowance to product diversification within the industry.

According to Coca Cola positioning statement, “Sales in Canada has outperformed other countries in the world” which shows that the company’s positioning statement is essential since it aids the company in crafting visage of the company as projected by the customers in the market. Since Coca Cola and PepsiCo both produce soft drink beverages PepsiCo may rival with Coca Cola in the marketplace. Therefore product positioning is essential in assisting Coca Cola potential customers in comprehending the uniqueness of the product produced by Coca Cola with that of PepsiCo (Liem & Sigurjonsson, 2014).

Market Product Focus

According to Coca Cola Company previous financial analysis the company has been in a position of acquiring substantial profits with the use of an effective brand positioning map. This map is effectively used due to the fact that the Canadian market has less competition compared to other regions of the world where other Coca Cola companies have been established. Through the vast collection of soft drink within the Coca Cola industry, the company is in a position of getting a wider and rigid grasp of the market. The below diagram shows the product positioning of the Coca Cola Company:

The above concise map of Coca Cola Canada shows the company’s positioning with the market outlining the brands offered in the company. Consequently the map also shows four possible consumption factors such as the trend, flavor, price, and health standards.

The scheme of marketing is definitely the most fundamental step of planning the marketing process in any business. This scheme allows marketers to apply tactics on every product. Market mix defines a collection of four fundamental factors such as product, place, prices and promotion). These factors also define the foundation of a particular business and its strategies. In the stage of planning for the market, the market mix is formulated to fulfill the demands of the targeted market or attain certain organizational objectives.

Product: Different products are characterized by various physical objects that the company owns or purchased by potential clients. However, the definition of the term ‘product’ is beyond its physical appearance of the goods. In the perspective of marketing, a product may also refer to a particular services; for instance a movie or holidays services, which allows clients to enjoy as a form of recreation.

Place: This market mix is significant to the Coca-Cola Company since it will be able to consider fundamental issues connected to physical supply of its products. Five fundamental components of geographical distribution are warehousing, order processing, material handling, transportation and inventory control. The company needs to further aim at balancing their activities with more fundamental distribution channels. Coca-Cola strategic management practice does not allow any form of delays in the consumer delivery process (i.e. product delivery to selling points), since this is insufficient organizational activity that depicts a defective image of services and products in the company.

Price: this market mix is significant as its affect both the company’s demand and supply chain. Coca Cola’s price of products is a fundamental factor that might influence the choices of potential clients. Often, this factor will form the difference that will stimulate consumers to purchase the product over its competitors. Due to this aspect, policies on pricing have to be formulated considering other external factors and consumer interests. Fulfilling the demands of customers is fundamental to achieving a firm balance between the covering of costs of production and sales expenses.

Pricing Strategies and Tactics

The strategy on pricing of a firm focusses on attained the speculated market objective, support product positioning or evaluate all the necessary external factors like competition and economic influences affect the business. There are five fundamental pricing strategies to be utilized in any business: penetration forms of pricing, market skim pricing, loss leader, discount pricing and price points. Over the past decades, the company has utilized the penetration for of prices as a means of acquiring a position in the competitive market. This strategy has enabled the company to win a large portion of the market share since its products penetrated in the market effectively.

Coca Cola Target Market Profile and Persona Canada

Cost-centered Pricing, Market-centered pricing and Competition-centered pricing are some of the methods. Considering the past few decade, the company has lost its game in terms of pricing, only to regain it recently. The company has retained the pricing strength when it utilized the competitive-centered methodology, which enhanced competition in the soft drinks industry. Leader-follower Pricing happens when one firm business takes position in the market.

Promotion: In the competitive marketing world established today, getting the best products in the strategized place at the best time cannot guarantee production success. However, the ability to embrace effective communication skills target the expected market to enhance the success so the business and the product (Yuvaraju, Subramanyam & Rao, 2014).

A forecast of finances defines sales and marketing predictions in future. The strategic step outlines potential revenues and costs to be spent in future. There are five fundamental expenditures considered by the company. These are product enhancement costs, research expenses, product expenses, supply costs and promotion costs (YU & LE, 2016). Composite of sales force is a fundamental and logic methodology that facilitates the forecasting of revenues. This methods involves evaluations from persona sales individuals who analyze the over expenditure of the organization. Upon successful forecasting of the revenues and costs, the management team can formulate how market mix strategies are combining to delivers maximum revenues in sales at minimal costs.

The process of implementation to transit plans to actions engages all the fundamental activities that enable planned actions to be operative. A successful implementation process depends upon the effectiveness of a particular firm to blend its workers, business structure and culture to cohesive scheme, which correlate to the marketing plan. To facilitate more success in the company, the management needs to impose fundamental transitions on production. The delivery and production of products needs to be on time and meet those strategic demands of potential clients and suppliers (Wang, 2017).

The process of implementation is attained using controlling and monitoring, which allow the organization to evaluate its variance and budget. The process is significant since it enables the company to undertake the recommendable actions that fulfill the objectives of the market. The following tools are applicable in Coca-Cola when monitoring their marketing plan:

• Sales Evaluation: The evaluation of sales outlines the overall organizational sales considering the segment in the market. This method outlines the company’s strengths and weakness in various sales areas. The distributers of the company’s products vary from minor stores to major retail stores. As a result, this provides the product enough exposer in the market.

When targeting at implementing novel market plans, the company needs to address targeted market segments. In addition to this, the business should evaluate applicable information to ensure novel market plans differ from the previous ones. When the company is searching from new markets, it should initially define major issues facing the business and collect useful data to mitigate its problems. The data that the company needs to gather to mitigate its issues are:

• Investigative research that explains the issues and considers the means of addressing it
• Definitive research that describes and measures factors like the potential of the market

An organization needs to consider factors, which affect the choices of consumers during purchasing. These factors include socio-cultural, psychological, economic and governmental factors. Psychological factors like perception, motivation, personality, lifestyle and self-concept affect the purchasing behavior of clients towards a given product. In that case, Coca-Cola has launched the Diet Coke, which is capable of satisfying various lifestyles. Social-cultural factors include culture, family and reference group (Kim, 2009). Economic factors include discretionary and disposable income.

Conclusion

The Coca-Cola brand has established a firm market trend in the world. With the application of various marketing techniques and dividing its market segment, the company has been able to report on more sales. Additionally, with the strategy of corporate partnership and its implementation plan, the company is able to display its operation, positioning and target in the soft drink market. Despite the fact the company is progressing well, it needs to evaluate its strategic approaches to enhance brand positioning and dealing with external challenges. The company is facing stiff competition from Pepsi since it also produces similar products targeting the same market. The Coca-Cola Company has a good opportunity to enter into new soft drink markets. The company considers improving its market access by innovating new products; maintain the quality of its products and enhancing its level of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. The company has forecasted its market in Canada by relying on modern marketing activities that will capture and motivate potential clients to purchase their products. The globalization of the brand in Canada needs to major on the cultural heritage of the region considering the transforming lifestyle of Canada consumers.

References

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