Week 9 - Chapter 18: Sales Promotion and Personal Selling

As part of the arsenal of marketing, sales promotions are strategies wherein an incentive is offered to the final consumer to impact sales in the short term. Also part of the family are trade promotions that have the same objective, but whose incentives are targeted to the channel of distribution. Coca-Cola is able to display, offer samples and coupons, hand out information regarding new products, and establish additional partners. 

Trade Promotion: Coca-Cola Company gives incentives to retailers in a way that offer them free samples and free bottles, the retailers then sometimes uses the same method when trying to sell to consumers. Sometimes Coca-Cola Company change their product prices according to the season. Summer is supposed to be a good season for beverage industry. So in winter they reduce their prices to maintain their sales and profit in some countries such as Pakistan.

Coca-Cola's Promotional Strategies include:

Getting shelves: They purchase shelves in big supermarkets or places like Costco and display their products as attractively as possible.

Eye Catching Positions: Salesman of the Coca-Cola Company positions their freezers (vending machines) and their products in eye-catching positions. Normally they keep their freezers near the entrance of the stores, and refrigerator's with Coke at the registers. (Gotta love the impulse buys)

The company also does sponsorships with different college and school's cafes, and with their sports events and other extra curriculum activities to hopefully form a partnership.

At the moment, Coca-Cola is sponsoring a butt load of contests and sweepstakes on their MyCokeRewards website. Contests like, winning a VIP trip for 4 to the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race or winning a trip for 4 to the American Idol Season 10 Finale. They also have ongoing prizes for people who drink coke products and enter the codes they get from the bottle caps. The more points you have the fancier the prizes you can trade them in for. Prizes like movie tickets, magazine subscriptions, all kinds of gift cards, cookware, and of course your usual Coca-Cola collectibles.

Week 8 - Chapter 17: Advertising and Public Relations

Diet Coke has topped rival Pepsi for the first time to become the second most popular soft drink in the country behind Coca Cola. This recent news marks a victory for the Coca Cola Company as its sodas now hold the top two spots, beating out its longtime rival PepsiCo Inc.

Coca Cola sold nearly 927 million cases of its diet soda in 2010, to Pepsi's 892 million. Regular Coke remains far and away the most popular soda, selling 1.6 billion cases.

Even by pumping up its traditional image and product advertising with commercials, posters, ads in magazines, newspapers and also online ads; Coca Cola Co. has sold 0.5 percent less soda in 2010 but still more than PepsiCo whose figure fell 2.6 percent. The top 10 sodas in the U.S. just for the sake of knowing, in order of popularity are: Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Sprite, Diet Pepsi, Diet Mountain Dew, Diet Dr Pepper and Fanta.

Coca Cola has evolved its public relations campaigns with the changing times and has kept up with the modern standards of environmental sustainability. In past years, Coca Cola's PR hasn't really been anything particularly fantastic but something wonderful that is actually worth mentioning is their association with the World Wildlife Fund. They teamed up to promote giving money to a “Polar Bear Support Fund”. The tag line of the campaign is “It’s time for us all to take action. To reduce our human impact on global climate change. To help support the polar bear”. With this campaign, the Coca Cola Company appears concerned for the environment and they are actually doing something about it. The PR campaign has it's own interactive website where you can learn about the polar bear populations. It features interactive “E-Cards” that you can send to people about supporting the polar bears. There is also a section on the site where the Coca Cola company promises to be sustainable and provides a list of “commitments” that the company has in regards to being environmentally friendly.

So for those who were wondering why Coke chose polar bears for those unique commercials, this was why.

Week 7 – Chapter 15: Retailing Continued…

My second stop was Coach... let's just say that I thought it was a good experience, everyone was nice and I was happy with what I got even though deep down I felt like I just wasted the same amount of money there that I could have used for two weeks worth of groceries or maybe even a months rent. I suppose that's the price you pay for luxury. After that I was feeling kind of broke so I just went home and ate some Ramen, instead of buying food.

As a customer when I walk into a store I don't like to be bombarded by sales people trying to sell me stuff, but I also don't like to be ignored when I actually need help which is rare because I always do my shopping research and know exactly what I'm going to get ahead of time. I have found that stores like Best Buy, Home Depot and most of the higher end stores like Coach and other fancy places has a good balance of attentiveness in my experience, unless you go in there looking bummy then they might look at you funny.

Week 7 – Chapter 15: Retailing

It's agreeable that working in retail can be a real pain in the ass to say the least and that usually it's the customers that make it so. Why do you think someone came up with the saying that "the customer is always right"? It's so that the employees can have something to calm them when what they really want to do is punch the customer in the face for doing or asking something retarded. One time in Kmart I saw this lady walk up to the register with her stuff and tell the cashier to hurry up because they needed to go to work...at this moment I thought to myself, why the F are you shopping then you dumb cow? F'ing go to work and shop later. Another time, I was in Office Max and heard someone asking an employee where they kept the pianos... foreigner maybe? or maybe just a complete idiot? Also, lets face it most people are just never satisfied, and always have something to complain about. It's safe to assume that there is always more than one side to any story. In the case of retailing there's usually two, the retailer and the customer. Having suffered on both sides of the playing field I can conclude that it sure does take a hell of a lot of patience to work in and to shop in retail stores.

So I decided to go on a shopping trip to hopefully try and record if something stupid would happen and sure enough it did. My first stop was H&M; this was my first visit to any H&M and sad to say it would also be my last. I went to get a scarf and I stood in line for over 20 minutes. There was only one person in front of me and he was already at the register. First of all, the cashier was rude, didn't even acknowledge the customer. Secondly, they were chatting away with another employee about stupidness. Third of all, they were folding the clothes in slow motion like it was laundry day or something. To make things even slower they walk away from the register in the middle of the transaction for like 10 minutes to do god knows what. Now you would assume that someone would think to come and take over the register at least to finish up with that one guy... but nope. By this time, all the people in line including myself start thinking and saying WTF?! Eventually, he comes back and finishes but when I walked out of the store I made a mental note to never go back to that H&M ever again.

Week 6 - Chapter 6: Consumer Decision Making

What makes consumers choose Coke over Pepsi or Sprite over 7-UP?  I have no idea, but Coca Cola figures out ways to stir things up a bit, even when they don't seem to work in their favor. An example was when Coke launched a new promotion called “Don’t Dew It” it tried to convince Mountain Dew fans to switch to their new product, Vault. Coke distributed coupons for their “Vault Taste Challenge.”  The coupon offered consumers a free Vault with the purchase of a 20-oz Mountain Dew. My question towards that campaign was why are they doing that? Coke is actually requiring that everyone using one of their coupons pay retail price for one of their competitors products. Does that make sense? Yeah I guess in this economy people will likely utilize coupons for a free product. But giving away a free Vault costs Coke the same amount of money whether they attach it to the purchase of a Mountain Dew or not. Well, at least the people who wouldn't normally know about the drink would have some exposure to it? And isn't marketing just another way of persuasion?

P.S. I didn't even know Vault existed until now. I'm not too sure how sales are compared to Mountain Dew but I don't think I have ever seen it in stores or supermarkets.