6.

0 Conclusions and Recommendations

Being a US-based brand that has established in 1886 with its global presence as the most
popular ready-to-drink items’ seller, there hardly exist any provinces where people are not aware
about the name of the Coca-Cola Company. It’s products are available even in very remote
places all around the Saudi Arabia and people of nearly all ages enjoy taking the pleasure of its
refreshments.
Despite all of the company's positive attributes, it has had to deal with public criticism for
operational incompetence on several occasions. This occurred after the Arab world became
aware of the company's sorry advertisement, which created a difficult circumstance for its
operational activities. Additionally, the business has also suffered from diverse complexities in
the Middle East and the GCC nations long back during the gulf war. However, with the help of
its strong financial position, strategic approaches, brand identity, and operational excellence it
expects to uphold its reputation and implement all its future strategies.
As recommendation, Coca-Cola Company should try to be more focused in terms of
compliance to the Islamic rules and regulatory barriers in Middle East countries and shape its
behavioral conduct so that it is not incompatible with the religious sentiments of the local
residents for which it could lose its market. Coca-Cola should be watchful about the expectations
of the Saudi market since there is a chance of reducing customer base at an extensive and sharp
rate for the recession. Being a multinational corporations, Coca-Cola must maintain cooperative
trend rather than conflicting with the Saudi Arabian government and let the government to
understand that this MNC and its subsidiary beverage companies are here to mutually benefit
each other using KSA’s competitive advantage.
It is essential for Coca-Cola in KSA to assess risks and unforeseen events connecting to
external-environments and ensure mobilization of internal resources and capabilities to cope with
the adverse effect of unique regulatory bindings until the progress of governmental attitude;
therefore, it is necessary to have local decision-making power in Saudi Arabian office rather than
waiting for headquarters’ approval.
The long historic corporate scandal of Coca-Cola from Nazi affiliation to genocide of 470
workers in Colombia would urge just a question mark to the corporate social responsibility.
Within the changing global political environment, the Coca-Cola Company needed to come from
malicious corporate scandal and inhuman activity. In this regards to bring workers and
employees trust the company needed to conduct schooling for its management regarding what is
corporate social responsibility rather than documentation. History demonstrates that the company
has accounted serious lode to your revenue due to its alignment towards Israeli rather than Arabs,
either the company needed to stand beside majority of people rather than fewer or it needed to
act naturally without any political affiliation. The company need to demonstrate more business
diplomacy regarding Middle East peace process that would crease clean image of the company.
At this moment, the company has to compete against the brands such as Mecca Cola and
PepsiCo as these companies are increasingly posing a great threat for Coca-Cola, which may
create low switching costs for many customers.
6.1 Strategic Implementation Issues
Despite constant competition from Pepsi, Coca-Cola remains the favored market brand,
more so when the financial position of the company is analyzed as compared to the competitors.
However, Coca-Cola Company cannot take anything for granted and ignore competition from its
main rival and other increasing localized competitions. The company makes use of its key
resources in the most efficient and productive way, a situation that has enabled the company to
serve its customers with exceptional quality and satisfaction.
As a result, the company has constantly strived to maintain growth, perform excellently,
and increase shareholders’ value through constant adoption of strategic management policies,
which further should be implemented effectively. Strategy Implementation Coca-Cola’s strategic
management has for a long time been facilitated through resource-based strategy. Through this
strategy, the company perceives its success to lie largely through the effective use of key
resources such as brands, systems, capital, and people (Pearce and Robinson, 2009).
The understanding of the company is that, by utilizing these resources, Coca-Cola has
been able to create a competitive advantage and edge over its competitors. Strategic management
at Coca-Cola Company remains one of the tenets the company has been able to navigate
challenging environments and realize its objectives and vision. Such strategic decisions include
initiating goals for fair returns on shareholders’ value and serving the community. At the same
time, Coca-Cola Company has been able to realize its objectives through innovation and
diversification of products to different markets around the world.
Furthermore, because of the implementation of strategy in an organization is a multi-
layered process that incorporates multiple strategic initiatives (Heracleous, 2003). In this way, no
particular single method can be adopted to implement strategy and succeed successfully. At the
same time, strategy implementation in an organization should involve a multidisciplinary team
guided by an efficient management team.
6.2 Stakeholder Measures and Value Analysis
Understanding Coca-Cola’s stakeholder identification and value analysis is
important to contributing positively to the company’s bottom line. To flourish as a
beverage giant, Coca-Cola continues to look at ways to expand globally that meets the
needs and demands of its stakeholders. Recognizing Coca-Cola’s value relies on grasping
the linkages between the organization’s interdependent activities (Millar & Porter, 1985).
When organizations attempt to add value to its stakeholders in order to legitimize
the survival and ensure its future is known as enterprise level strategy (Meznar et al.,
1991). Enterprise level strategy includes the following mechanisms the environment and
benefits (Meznar et al., 1991). Coca-Cola’s mission is to refresh the world; inspire
moments of optimism and happiness; and to create value and make a difference. Their
vision is to continue achieving sustainable, quality growth (Mission, Vision and Values,
2015). Coca-Cola’s internal and external stakeholders are: customers, employees,
bottlers, manufacturers and many others who have an interest in their business.
Maintaining engagement with stakeholders allows Coca-Cola to have ongoing
conversations that support continuous improvement and help deliver commitments.

Table : Stakeholder and Stakeholder Concerns

Stakeholder Stakeholder Concerns

Shareholders Return on investments, income and profits, strategic plans

Employees Wages and salaries, job security, compensation, respect, career development

Customers Value-add, quality, customer care, ethical products

Suppliers Business opportunities, fair and equitable treatment

Community Jobs, environmental protection, truthful communication

Government Taxation, GST, legislation, employment, truthful reporting, diversity,

legalities, externalities

Coca-Cola Company prioritized the stakeholders into four parts as high influence low interest,
high influence high interest, low influence low interest, and low influence high interest.

The following diagram clearly shows the method of prioritize its stakeholders.

Keep Satisfied Manage Closely

Power

Apathetics Defenders

Interest

Figure : Prioritization of Stakeholders

The four groups of stakeholders identified by the management of Coca-Cola Company as
follows:
• Keep satisfied – High influence and low interest
 Government, major customers, and media
• Manage closely – High influence and high interest
 Shareholders, existing and potential investors
• Apathetic – Monitor
 Small customers, small shareholders
• Defenders – Keep informed
 Employees, local community, suppliers

REFERENCES:
The Coca-Cola Company - 7236 Words | Research Paper Example (ivypanda.com)

Strategy Implementation for Coca-Cola Company Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written
Essays - 1250 words (studentshare.org)

Coca Cola's Stakeholder Identification And Value Analysis | Bartleby