Coca-cola Is Everything: SCM, CRM, ERP, Social Media, You Name It

Coca-Cola is a global leader in the beverage industry; it has hundreds of brands, including soft drinks, fruit juices, sports drinks and other beverages. To be a successful company, Coca-cola has shown its capability in fulfilling the basic economic equation, that is, to meet the supply with the demand. It is proud to gain more customers while keeping existing customers.

 1. Why is standardization so important in supply chain management? Coke is developing its own set of software services for bottlers to use. Do you think Coke charges the bottles for these software services? Why or why not?

 

Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards. Supply Chain Management is IT system that supports activities by ensuring a smooth flow of inventory. SCM system tracks inventory and information along business processes and across companies.

      Standardization is important in supply chain management because everyone involved with the organization would be able to use the same technology. Besides, standardization can help to eliminate excess inventory and helps to be cost saving. The process of supply chain management will be more efficiently streamlined.

      In my opinion, Coke would not charge the bottles for these software services because it would be benefitting Coke more if they use that software and causing them to actually reduce the expenses. 

 

    

      2. How is My Coke Rewards an example of a switching cost? How can a switching cost not have a monetary penalty associated with it?

 

      Switching cost is defined as “cost that make customer reluctant to switch to another product or service supplier” (Haag & Cummings, 2013). Coke launched their marketing program “My Coke Rewards” to reward customers for their loyalty to Coca-Cola and keeping those customers from buying their competitors’ products. In my point of view, “My Coke Rewards” is an example of a switching cost because it is a cost paid by the Coca-Cola Company to gain new customers and keep existing customers by giving them an incentive for becoming a Coke customer.

      As long as the Coca-Cola Company retains their existing customers and if they can get an increase in new customers, they will not have a monetary penalty associated with the switching cost. 

 

     3. What sort of business intelligence could Coke gather from its My Coke Rewards Web site? How could it use this information for customer relationship management activities?

Business intelligence is very important for a running business. From the My Coke Rewards website, Coke is able to find out the customers preference and the popular products among all. They can use that business intelligence to create rewards, sweepstakes, and instant win games to keep existing customers and also draw in new customers.

By gathering this information, Coke then able to give an insight on what their customers prefer in their products and also the interests of the customers that are purchasing their products, for example, entertainment, sport or hobby.

  

         4. Visit Coca-cola’s Facebook page. Can you buy Coke products there? What social media tools are present that allow you to communicate with Coca-cola?

         https://www.facebook.com/cocacola

 

     This is the first time I visit Coca-cola’s Facebook page and I find it very user friendly. However I can’t buy their products there as facebook is not allow user to use the fans page as a business website. However, I believe in future, Coca-cola will create a link which link to the Coca-cola Store (http://www.coca-cola.com) so that Coca-cola fans can actually “purchase” its products from Facebook. All data is being transferred from the actual Coca-Cola store. The social media tools to communicate with Coca-Cola are Foursquare, Tweeter, Instagram and Linkedin.

      5. Now, visit Pepsi’s Facebook page. Compare and contrast it to Coca-cola’s Facebook page. Which has more eye appeal? Which seems to have more activity? Why do you think this is true?

 

      When comparing Pepsi’s Facebook’s page and Coca-Cola’s Facebook’s page, I noticed that Coca-Cola had more eye appeal and a great deal more activity. Numbers tell the truth. There are 79,613,663 people like Coca-cola’s page and 592,081 people are talking about this page. On the contrast, in Pepsi’s page, there are only 31,475,018 people like the page and only 142,321 people are talking about it, it is one third of the Coca-cola’s result!

     From researching each page, I discovered that Coca-Cola has more social interaction with their customers with a Coca-Cola Social link and “Your Stories” link. Also they have more information about their product as well as information on promotional tours, rewards, photos, videos, & concerts. Pepsi only has access to shop, deals, events, and career opportunities