The Case of Coca Cola Corporation

Embracing Change and Adapting to Customer Tastes

Coca-Cola (often abbreviated to "Coke") is a cola drink, and is the world's most popular carbonated soft drink. The Coca-Cola Company's headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, where the drink was first concocted around 1884. Although Coke's inventor, John Pemberton, was not a shrewd marketer of his drink, the ownership of Coke eventually passed to Asa Candler, whose company remains the producer of Coke today. Candler's successful marketing, continued by his successors such as Robert Woodruff, established Coke as a major soft drink first in the United States and later around the world. When Asa Griggs Candler headed the Coca-Cola Company in the late 1800s, there was no way he knew his company would one day be valued at upwards of $180 billion. That’s a lot of money for a business that sells soft drinks.
Coca-Cola didn’t become the powerful force it is today by sheer chance.

In the 1980s, Coke’s biggest rival, Pepsi, was aggressively targeting it. This caused Coca-Cola to re-evaluate its offerings. Eventually, the company decided to concoct a new, sweeter soda. They called it simply New Coke.

Unfortunately, the public didn’t take too kindly to the new beverage. But Coke’s executives didn’t let the mishap derail their success.
Quickly, management decided to pull New Coke and replace it with the older, established formula. Lo and behold, Coca-Cola Classic was born, and Coke maintained its market dominance.

Just as quickly as Coke changed to accommodate its customers’ sweeter palates, it changed direction again when it realized it made the wrong move. But that’s not the only instance where Coca-Cola listened to its customers and enacted change. Again, how is a company primarily known for selling sugary drinks valued at $180 billion in 2016 and 84 billion U.S. dollars in 2020? Coke doesn’t only sell sweetened carbonated beverages. In fact, the beverage king sells more than 500 brands to customers in over 200 countries.

Today, many of its offerings like DASANI, vitamin water, and Evian are even considered healthy drinks. In other words, Coca-Cola has consistently strived to diversify its product portfolio and expand into new markets. By and large, Coke has succeeded in these efforts. This shows the company's strategy to responding to varying consumer tastes and expectations and changing itself according to it.

The Coca Cola company used theory of organisation change presented by Kotler (1996) which elaborated the procedure to manage change on the people dimension of the organisation. In addition to making operational and strategic changes, the company also changed its advertising strategy by targeting various groups of consumers like American consumers, African consumers, Middle and far eastern consumers and European consumers. The company altered the packaging of its coca cola brand and developed more product lines and broadened them globally (The Coca-Cola company case. n.d.). The present condition of Coca cola Company worldwide is very good. The company is selling its beverages throughout the world successfully. 

Question 1 is based on the case study whereas questions 2 and 3 are general.

1.Coca-Cola as a company has a heritage of embracing change rather than resist it and it should translate into their future endeavours towards change management to ensure that the organisation is best poised to market under all sorts of environmental conditions.                                                
Using the above case study, analyse the factors both internal and external, which have led to a need for changes in the beverages industry, with particular emphasis to Coca-Cola.   This should include a discussion of;                                            

a.the main source of the pressures for change

b.the need for a clear shared vision in order to manage change effectively 

c.Why is it important to identify the resources ( capacity for change) that will be required before you proceed to implement change

d.Why is following the PDCA plan a good monitoring method for analysing the effectiveness of change.                                                             

2.Success or failure of change outcome depends on type of change, company type, company culture and individuals within the organization. For a business of your choice, identify and describe the factors which may result in a failure to change and its effect on the motivation of the workforce.

3.Why do people and organisations resist change?  Describe two methods (theories) of managing resistance to change and their effects on the motivation of the workforce.