Case study The Evolving Strategy of Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has long been the most international of enterprises. Since 1902, Coca-Cola has expanded into 200 countries. Coca-Cola's strategy had one of localization. Local operations were granted a high degree of independence to manage their own operations as they saw fit. However, new leadership pursued global company initiatives through aggressive management, marketing, focusing on core brands, and taking equity stakes in foreign bottlers so that the company could exert more strategic control over them. This one-size-fits-all strategy was built around standardization and the realization of economies of scale by using the same advertising message worldwide. However, such strategy changed again back to a more localized approach. At this time, Coca-Cola failed to produce expected growth and expanded its strategic approach to encompass pricing, product offerings, and non-standardized marketing messages. The result was international strategic alliances, new international drink ideas.

Q. Using information in the case study provided above, discuss the benefits that Coca-Cola has received from its globalization efforts.