Coca-Cola - a Global Empire

Coca-Cola: A Global Empire

Coca-Cola is a company that is known worldwide for its product. It is a drink that spans all ages, colors, races, and countries. The Coca-Cola Company is one that has been around for over 100 years, and has used this time to perfect its marketing strategy. The success of the company was built on many people with the great business knowledge and know-how to take a simple drink, and make it into a symbol that represents humanity. This paper will focus on not only the globalization of Coke, and Coke as a company, but also what advertising and media strategies have been used to help in the discourse of its globalization.

Coca-Cola has operated a franchise distribution system since 1889. This is where the Coca-Cola Company produces the syrup concentrate, which is then sold to various bottlers all across the world who operates under a certain territory according to Tucker (27). This Company owns it main bottling company in North America that is called Coca-Cola refreshments.

The company has its headquarters in Atlanta Georgia. It has also enlisted it stocks in NYSE and participate in DJIA, S&P 500 index, the Russell 1000 index and the Russell 1000 Growth Stock Index. Its current chairperson is Muhtar Kent.

Coca-Cola Company has a tradition of expansion through acquisition of companies and transforming them into multinational bottling companies of their own. According to Tucker pg 14, the company recently attempted to buy Huiyuan Juice Group, which is Chinese juice makers as part of it expansion. Otherwise, its offer was rejected on the virtual that it will create monopoly. The other reason that was cited was the issue of nationalism that leads to the abortion of the idea. Finally, another reason that was seen to contribute to the rejection was the issue of American rejection to the bid for UNOCAL to Chinese government, which is a partly state owned oil company. Therefore, Chinese used this rejection as revenge.

However, Coca-Cola Company has a wide history of acquisitions. In 1960, the company acquired Minute Maid. Later in 1993, the Coca-Cola Company acquired Indian cola brand Thums Up. This was followed by an acquisition of Bargs in 1995. In 2001, the company went ahead in its tradition of acquisition and acquired Odwalla brand of fruit juices smoothies and bars that cost them $181 million. Due to its expansion and customer increase in recent years, it have gone ahead and acquired Fuze Beverage from its founder Lance Collins and Castanea Partners that was estimated at a price of $ 250 million (Tucker, 23).

Increasing in company's revenue is their key tradition to ensure they sustain their lead in the market place. According to the current company annual report, the company has expanded exponentially and sells beverages products to more than 200 countries worldwide. According to the 2010 report, out of 50 billions beverages that is taken worldwide by customers, the beverages that bears the Coca-Cola trademark or from companies that are licensed by the Coca-Cola company account for 1.6 billions drinks every day (August, 9).

According to the annual report, the Coca-Cola Company has their distribution sales across the world to sustain their tradition increase in revenue through sales. The United States lead their sales catering for 42% overall. Their sales in Mexico, India, Brazil, and Japan and in the People Republic of China are represented by 37% of the gross sales. However, 20% of their sales were spread all over the other parts of the world. In 2010, the Coca-Cola brand was announced to be the first one to have toped £ 1 billion in annual grocery sales (Zyman, 23).

Traditional Lobbying for better legislation

Coca-Cola Company has developed a tradition of fighting for beverage companies through lobbying to ensure good legislation and against unnecessary taxation. In United States, the company is a major lobbying force that works to gain favorable legislation in the beverage industry. It put quite a big amount of cash for lobbying where the company has been increasing this money in subsequent years for better financing of the exercise. In 2005 and 2006, the company spent $ 1 million. This was increased in 2007 and in 2008 where $1.7 million and $2.7 million shillings were used respectively. In 2009, lobbying expenses rose to 4.5 million that merely doubled from the previous year. Most of the increased lobby of the company is due to escalating taxes in the country especially on soft drinks among other sweetened beverages (August, 16). In 2009 for example, the company had committed 38 lobbyists at seven different firms that were lobbying on the behalf of the company. The issue of lobby is meant to ensure that the company fights for the right of the manufacturers of the soft drinks. This makes the company that is not in a position to lobby also to gain from the Coca-Cola lobby.

Bottlers as symbolic nature

The most symbolic nature of the