Coca Cola has been leading the soft drink market around the world in the recent century due to its superior popularity and quality. Coke drinks appear almost everywhere from vending machines, convenient stores to coffee shops, restaurants in hundreds of nations worldwide and become such a prestige brand name. Nevertheless, the components that contribute substantially to Coca Cola’s impressive success are the ones lying in its own powerful marketing strategies. Effective distribution of different types of product towards various market segments together with outstanding promotion strategies are noticeable features in Coca Cola’s marketing tactics.
1. Describe the specific type of consumer that the Coca-Cola Company is targeting with each of the following products: Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke Plus, Coca-Cola Blak, and Full Throttle Blue Demon. What types of demographic segmentation is each product’s marketing most likely to include? To meet the diversified demand of the global market, Coca Cola has carried out effective market segmentation on the basis of demographic factors and allocate different kinds of Coke drinks in each consumer sector. By implementing this strategy, Coca Cola has penetrated more deeply into consumer market and, to some extent, satisfy the constantly changing preferences of the target market. Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke Plus, Coca Cola Blak and Full Throttle Blue Demon are typical products that should be taken into consideration. In general, Coca Cola has conducted gender segmentation for all of these beverages’ marketing. Diet Coke is a low-calorie soft drink introduced to female customers who want to tighten belt. Diet Coke Plus which is just the same with Diet Coke but is sweeter and supplemented with more vitamins and minerals is manufactured to target towards male consumers wishing to lose weight.
Coke Zero, in turn, is almost identical with Diet Coke Plus but with taste more similar to the original Coke and a changing brand name without the word “Diet”. This product aims to appeal male customers from 18 to 34 year old who want low-calorie beverage but consider Diet Coke Plus as an image of soft drink for female. Coca Cola has conducted a combination of both age and gender segmentation for the marketing of Coke Zero. Coca Cola Blak and Full Throttle Blue Demon are also products with the marketing strategy integrating different factors of demographic segmentation. Coca Cola Blak’s marketing includes age, income and gender segmentation with the promotion towards older and cosmopolitan males who are willing to pay higher. Meanwhile, Full Throttle Blue Demon are manufactured to attract Hispanic men which is the market segmented by gender and ethnic factors. 2. Why do you think that the hidden-camera videos used to promote Coke Zero were an effective way to reach its target market? Do you think a similar strategy with a viral marketing campaign on the Internet would appeal to the target market for Diet Coke Plus? The hidden camera videos have been an extremely successful way for Coca Cola to promote Coke Zero. The main purpose of this advertisement is to emphasize that in spite of being a low-calorie beverage, Coke Zero seems to have an almost exactly the same taste with the original Coca Cola. This is also what its target market who is males between 18 and 34 ages is looking for.
The humorous videos series have pointed out that since these two drinks taste too identical, people will hardly distinguish between them and a taste infringement arouses. It might also imply that in the future Coke Zero may attain such a popularity that people will turn to buy Coke Zero instead of the traditional Coke. By involving real attorneys in these videos, Coca Cola has generated a sense of reality and drawn the attention of huge amount of viewers finding it interesting that Coca Cola is making fun of itself. In addition, the taking advantage of Internet also creates a strong effect for spreading marketing advertisement and makes people become more familiar with the new brand Coke Zero. At the same time, the target male consumers have started to engage with the idea that Coke Zero is a beverage tasting the same with original Coke rather than the diet one for female. If a similar strategy with a viral marketing campaign on the Internet is applied with Diet Coke Plus, the result brought about will not be successful like that.
The main reason underlying is that Diet Coke Plus is in nature just a sweeter version of Diet Coke supplemented by additional nutrition. As a result, it is obvious that Diet Coke Plus is not as tasty as the traditional Coke and the aspartame-sweetened aftertaste also reduces the target market’s satisfaction on it. For another thing, as long as the brand name remains with the word “Diet”, male consumers will continue to consider it as a product of diet for women, which undoubtedly impose a negative image for the product. Consequently, the similar strategy will still fail to appeal the target market. 3. Do you think Diet Coke could have been repositioned to change consumers’ perceptions of it enough to be considered a drink equally appealing to men? Even though Diet Coke could have been repositioned, it is likely that the drink will still be unable to attack the male market just equally as it did with the female market. One major explanation is because the Diet Coke has been introduced as a product targeting towards females desiring to lose weight in such a long time that the image of it has been almost fixed. Consumers find it difficult to accept the fact the men are going to drink the beverage that previously used by only women. The word “Diet” remained in the brand name seems to even more convey the female-use concept. Furthermore, Diet Coke is manufactured using a totally different ingredient recipe from the original Coca Cola with the use of aspartame sweetener, which has made its taste change considerably and less flavoring. Thus, male consumers will still refrain from purchasing the product.
