research about coca cola company

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Coca-Cola Company - statistics & facts

A closer look: the performance of the coca-cola company, comparison: coca-cola's biggest rival, pepsico, and its performance, key insights.

Detailed statistics

Revenue and financial key figures of Coca-Cola 2010-2023

Revenue distribution of the Coca-Cola Company worldwide 2023, by operating segment

Brand value of the most valuable soft drink brands worldwide 2023

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Brands & Leaders

Coca-Cola: brand value 2006-2024

Most well-known soft drink brands in the United States 2023

Global packaging distribution mix of Coca-Cola's products by type 2022

Further recommended statistics

• Basic Statistic Biggest companies in the world by market value 2023
• Premium Statistic Brand value of the most valuable soft drink brands worldwide 2023
• Premium Statistic Coca-Cola: brand value 2006-2024
• Premium Statistic Revenue of the soft drinks market worldwide by country 2023
• Premium Statistic Per-capita volume sales in the soft drinks market worldwide by country in 2022

Biggest companies in the world by market value 2023

The 100 largest companies in the world by market capitalization in 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Most valuable soft drink brands worldwide in 2023, based on brand value (in million U.S. dollars)

Coca-Cola's brand value from 2006 to 2024 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue of the soft drinks market worldwide by country 2023

Revenue of the soft drinks market worldwide by country in 2023 (in million U.S. dollars)

Per-capita volume sales in the soft drinks market worldwide by country in 2022

Per-capita volume sales in the soft drinks market worldwide, by country in 2022 (in liters)

• Premium Statistic Revenue and financial key figures of Coca-Cola 2010-2023
• Premium Statistic Coca-Cola Company's net operating revenues worldwide 2007-2023
• Basic Statistic Revenue distribution of the Coca-Cola Company worldwide 2023, by operating segment
• Premium Statistic The Coca-Cola Company: global unit sales volume share 2022, by region
• Premium Statistic Coca-Cola's global workforce 2007-2023
• Premium Statistic Coca-Cola Co.: ad spend 2014-2023
• Premium Statistic Global packaging distribution mix of Coca-Cola's products by type 2022

Global revenue and financial results of the Coca-Cola Company from 2010 to 2023 (in million U.S. dollars)

Coca-Cola Company's net operating revenues worldwide 2007-2023

The Coca-Cola Company's net operating revenues worldwide from 2007 to 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Revenue distribution share of the Coca-Cola Company worldwide in 2023, by operating segment

The Coca-Cola Company: global unit sales volume share 2022, by region

Unit sales volume share of The Coca-Cola Company worldwide in 2022, by region

Coca-Cola's global workforce 2007-2023

Number of employees of the Coca-Cola Company worldwide from 2007 to 2023 (in 1,000s)

Coca-Cola Co.: ad spend 2014-2023

Coca-Cola Company's advertising expense from 2014 to 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Global packaging distribution mix of Coca-Cola's products by type 2022

Packaging distribution mix of the Coca-Cola Company worldwide in 2022, by type

Competitors

• Premium Statistic Market share of leading CSD companies in the U.S. 2008-2022
• Premium Statistic PepsiCo's net revenue worldwide 2007-2023
• Premium Statistic Keurig Dr Pepper's net sales worldwide 2017-2023
• Premium Statistic Global revenue of Red Bull 2011-2023
• Premium Statistic Global net sales of Monster Beverage 2008-2022
• Premium Statistic Global sales of the Nestlé Group 2005-2023

Market share of leading CSD companies in the U.S. 2008-2022

Market share of leading carbonated soft drink (CSD) companies in the United States from 2008 to 2022*

PepsiCo's net revenue worldwide 2007-2023

PepsiCo's net revenue worldwide from 2007 to 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Keurig Dr Pepper's net sales worldwide 2017-2023

Keurig Dr Pepper's net sales worldwide from 2017 to 2023 (in million U.S. dollars)

Global revenue of Red Bull 2011-2023

Revenue of Red Bull worldwide from 2011 to 2023 (in billion euros)

Global net sales of Monster Beverage 2008-2022

Monster Beverage's net sales worldwide from 2008 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)*

Global sales of the Nestlé Group 2005-2023

Nestlé Group's sales worldwide from 2005 to 2023 (in billion CHF)

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Understanding coca-cola's business model and performance across key operating markets.

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Cans of Coca-Cola Co. brand Coke carbonated soft drink sit stacked inside a warehouse at the ... [+] Coca-Cola Cambodia Bottling Plant. Photographer: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) is one of the largest beverage companies with a diversified geographic presence.

A] Business Model

1) What Does It Offer?

• Coca-Cola Revenues   (How Does Coca-Cola Make Money) are generated by the sale of a variety of beverages such as sparkling soft drinks; water, enhanced water and sports drinks; juice, dairy and plant-based beverages; tea and coffee; and energy drinks.
• Its brands include Coca-Cola, Diet Coke/Coca-Cola Light, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Fanta, Sprite, Minute Maid, Powerade, Dasani, Simply, Gold Peak, and Glacéau Smartwater.
• Additionally, Coca-Cola also acquired Costa Coffee in January 2019, with plans to leverage its coffee platform.

2) Who Pays?

• Normally, the company sells the concentrate to its bottlers who then sell it to retail customers by adding water and the fizz.
• All soft drink customers in all the geographies that the company functions in, are potential end buyers.

3) What Are The Alternatives

• Within the industry, the main competition comes from PepsiCo, Dr Pepper Snapple, and Nestle, among others.
• Increasingly, as with most other soft drinks, these products also have to compete with fruit juices, energy drinks, and other healthier drinks. Some of these non-carbonated drinks are serious competitors and command impressive market shares within their market segments, with Red Bull, being a prime example.

4) Historical Revenue Trend

• Coca-Cola revenues have declined over the last three years, mainly due to loss of revenue from extensive refranchising ( sale or conversion of company-owned stores to existing or new franchisees ) of its bottling operations.
• However, with most of the refranchising already done, total revenue is expected to increase in 2019 and 2020, led by higher demand for energy and sports drinks across geographies, along with benefits from major acquisitions.

You can view the Trefis interactive dashboard - Coca-Cola Revenues: How Does Coca-Cola Make Money? - to understand the revenue sources of the company and alter the assumptions to arrive at your own revenue projections for Coca-Cola. In addition, here is more  Consumer Staples data .

B] Performance In Key Operating Markets

1) EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa)

• Segment revenue has continuously increased from 2016 to 2018 and we expect this trend to continue going forward.
• Higher revenue is primarily to be driven by volume growth, led by sparkling soft drinks and Fuze Tea, coupled with strong pricing in a majority of the key markets.

2) Latin America

• After increasing in 2017, revenue remained almost flat in 2018 due to volume decline in Argentina and Mexico.
• Going forward, we expect revenue to increase due to strong performance in the non-carbonated drinks category, along with energy and sports drinks, partially offset by currency headwinds.

3) North America

• Revenues have maintained an increasing trend till 2018 and are expected to grow further over the next two years led by the impact of new package initiatives executed in the market, and strong pricing mix within the sparkling soft drink portfolio.

4) Asia-Pacific

• Segment revenue growth is expected to be driven by a healthy increase in volume sold, partially offset by subdued pricing.
• Demand is likely to be driven primarily by China and other emerging market economies.

5) Bottling Investments

• This consists primarily of its Company-owned or controlled bottling operations, sales and distribution operations of finished products.
• Bottling investment revenue has seen a sharp decline over recent years due to refranchising of the company's bottling operations.
• However, with most of the refranchising already done, segment revenue is expected to decline at a much lower rate.

6) Global Ventures

• This is a new addition to the company’s operating segments following the acquisition of Costa in January 2019, with plans to leverage its coffee platform.
• With 2019 being the first full year of the segment's operations, revenue is expected to be high in the next two years.

C] Revenue Outlook

• For the full year, revenue is expected to increase by 9.3% from $31.9 billion in 2018 to $34.8 billion in 2019, and further by 4.7% to $36.5 billion in 2020.
• Higher revenue is likely to be driven by growth across almost all major segments, offset by slightly lower revenue from the bottling business.
• Revenue growth would also be driven by inorganic growth strategies of Coca-Cola, with the company announcing several key acquisitions in 2018, including Costa Limited (completed in Q1 2019) and a strategic partnership with BODYARMOR. Additionally, it also announced the acquisition of full ownership in Chi Ltd, which is a fast-growing leader in expanding beverage categories, including juices, value-added dairy, and iced tea in Nigeria.

According to Coca-Cola Valuation by Trefis, we have a price estimate of $52 per share for KO’s stock.

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About The Coca-Cola Company

The world’s most valuable brand portfolio with unparalleled distribution capabilities.

Company Profile

Total beverage company.

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) is a total beverage company with products sold in more than 200 countries and territories.

Our company’s purpose is to refresh the world and make a difference. We sell multiple billion-dollar brands across several beverage categories worldwide. Our portfolio of sparkling soft drink brands includes Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta. Our water, sports, coffee and tea brands include Dasani, smartwater, vitaminwater, Topo Chico, BODYARMOR, Powerade, Costa, Georgia, Gold Peak and Ayataka. Our juice, value-added dairy and plant-based beverage brands include Minute Maid, Simply, innocent, Del Valle, fairlife and AdeS.

We’re constantly transforming our portfolio, from reducing sugar in our drinks to bringing innovative new products to market. We seek to positively impact people’s lives, communities and the planet through water replenishment, packaging recycling, sustainable sourcing practices and carbon emissions reductions across our value chain. Together with our bottling partners, we employ more than 700,000 people, helping bring economic opportunity to local communities worldwide.

At-A-Glance

138 years of.

Refreshing PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

Master Brands

Products Sold In

200+ countries and territories

Worldwide in NARTD Value 1

Sparkling Soft Drinks

Water and Sports Drinks

System associates worldwide

Bottling partners

System Production Facilities

Retail customer outlets

Invested $9B+

System Capital Expenditure Investment in 2023

1. Source: GlobalData 2023 Rankings. Includes On and Off premise channels.

Select Well-Known Coca-Cola Company Brands

The Coca-Cola Company Strategy

Building on solid foundations within a growing and vibrant industry.

At The Coca-Cola Company, we are in pursuit of becoming an even more consumer-centric total beverage company. Beverages are a growing and vibrant industry with long-term growth opportunities well into the future. We are a networked global organization that combines the benefits of scale with deep local intimacy required to win in the marketplace. We deliver results through many different operating environments by continuously improving our world-class marketing and innovation, revenue growth management and integrated execution with our franchise bottling partners.

View Our Strategy

Our growth platform revolves around the following strategies:

• Vision : Total Beverage Company
• Growth Strategy : Pursuing Excellence Globally and Winning Locally
• Sustainability: Leading in Sustainability with Collective Action
• Financials : Compounding Quality Value

Operating Segments

We combine the benefits of our global scale with deep local intimacy to win in the marketplace.

The Coca-Cola Company’s operational structure includes four geographic operating segments: Europe, Middle East & Africa; Latin America; North America; and Asia Pacific. The company reporting structure also includes the non-geographic segments of Global Ventures and Bottling Investments.

Production and Distribution

The coca-cola system.

The Coca-Cola Company manufactures, markets, and sells certain beverage concentrates, syrups, and finished beverages to authorized bottling partners. Depending on the product, our bottling partners combine the concentrates with sweeteners, still water, and/or sparkling water, to prepare, package, sell, and distribute finished beverages.

* The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling partners are collectively known as the Coca-Cola system. The Coca-Cola Company does not own, manage or control most local bottling companies.

About The Coca-Cola System

Concentrate Operations

We manufacture, market and sell beverage concentrates, sometimes referred to as "beverage bases," and syrups, including fountain syrups.

Finished Product Operations

In addition to concentrates and syrups, we also manufacture, market and sell finished sparkling soft drinks and other nonalcoholic beverages.

Bottling Partners

Our bottling partners and some company-owned operations manufacture, package, merchandise and distribute the finished branded beverages to our customers and vending partners, who then sell our beverages to consumers.

Driving the Growth Agenda

Meet our people.

Our company’s focus on disciplined portfolio growth and value creation is the product of our people and their strong commitment to creating beverage brands that are loved and shared by people around the world.

Coca-Cola Leaders

View Board of Directors

Presentations

View presentations, transcripts and videos from The Coca‑Cola Company.

View investor-related contacts for The Coca-Cola Company.

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Coca-Cola Co. summary

Coca-Cola Co. , U.S. corporation known for manufacturing the syrup and concentrate for the soft drink Coca-Cola, the most popular branded drink in the world. Coca-Cola was invented as a tonic by an Atlanta, Ga., pharmacist, John S. Pemberton (1831–88); it included cocaine (removed in 1905) and caffeine-rich extracts of the kola nut. Another Atlanta pharmacist, Asa Griggs Candler (1851–1929), acquired the formula and in 1892 founded the Coca-Cola Co., which he built into a commercial empire. Candler saw the product as syrup to be combined with carbonated water at a soda fountain; he did not anticipate the success of the bottled product, and as a result bottling operations were run by franchisees. After World War II the company began to manufacture other beverages, and in the early 21st century its product line included root beer, bottled water, juices, and sports drinks. Its corporate headquarters are in Atlanta.

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• v.21(9); 2018 Jun

Coca-Cola – a model of transparency in research partnerships? A network analysis of Coca - Cola’s research funding (2008–2016)

Paulo m serôdio.

1 Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK

Martin McKee

2 Department of Health Services Research and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

David Stuckler

3 University of Bocconi and Dondena Research Centre, Milan, Italy

Associated Data

For supplementary material accompanying this paper visit https://doi.org/10.1017/S136898001700307X.

To (i) evaluate the extent to which Coca-Cola’s ‘Transparency Lists’ of 218 researchers that it funds are comprehensive; (ii) map all scientific research acknowledging funding from Coca-Cola; (iii) identify those institutions, authors and research topics funded by Coca-Cola; and (iv) use Coca-Cola’s disclosure to gauge whether its funded researchers acknowledge the source of funding.

Using Web of Science Core Collection database, we retrieved all studies declaring receipt of direct funding from the Coca-Cola brand, published between 2008 and 2016. Using conservative eligibility criteria, we iteratively removed studies and recreated Coca-Cola’s transparency lists using our data. We used network analysis and structural topic modelling to assess the structure, organization and thematic focus of Coca-Cola’s research enterprise, and string matching to evaluate the completeness of Coca-Cola’s transparency lists.

Three hundred and eighty-nine articles, published in 169 different journals, and authored by 907 researchers, cite funding from The Coca-Cola Company. Of these, Coca-Cola acknowledges funding forty-two authors (<5 %). We observed that the funded research focuses mostly on nutrition and emphasizes the importance of physical activity and the concept of ‘energy balance’.

Conclusions

The Coca-Cola Company appears to have failed to declare a comprehensive list of its research activities. Further, several funded authors appear to have failed to declare receipt of funding. Most of Coca-Cola’s research support is directed towards physical activity and disregards the role of diet in obesity. Despite initiatives for greater transparency of research funding, the full scale of Coca-Cola’s involvement is still not known.

There is longstanding concern that multinational companies manufacturing products harmful to health fund research seeking to prevent public health policies designed to counter the effects of their products. Thanks to the disclosure of tobacco industry documents, much has been learnt about how that particular industry conducted research designed to create confusion and to reframe the agenda in ways that advanced its interests ( 1 – 4 ) . Recently attention has turned to similar activities by the food industry. In early 2015, Coca-Cola attracted extensive criticism when it was revealed that it had funded a ‘Global Energy Balance Network’ (GEBN), led by John Peters and James Hill (University of Colorado), Gregory Hand (West Virginia University) and Steven Blair (University of South Carolina), whose main message was that there was no compelling evidence of a significant link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity ( 5 ) . The funding agreement with the GEBN was not visible for public scrutiny, as none of the parties involved had disclosed it on their websites, and it was made available by the recipient universities only in response to requests under freedom of information laws. However, the scale and influence of hidden research by the food and beverage industry are unclear and, so far, there has been a dearth of research on the role of vested interests such as Coca-Cola’s.

One methodological challenge is identifying those articles funded by specific actors. Previously, search tools such as Web of Science, PubMed or MEDLINE have not facilitated this. However, in 2008 Thomson Reuters implemented a large-scale indexation of the paratextual information on funding acknowledgement statements and made them available for searching in one of its databases, the Web of Science Core Collection. Building on this innovation, we developed an algorithm in R programming language that crawls the results of a Web of Science search on funding statements and scrapes, parses and compiles the metadata from the studies identified by the search, so making it possible to review systematically research funded by Coca-Cola.

Using this new dimension of bibliometric analysis and the innovative tool we designed, we undertook a systematic review of the extent of involvement of Coca-Cola in funding nutrition research. We further took advantage of a unique opportunity to evaluate the extent to which Coca-Cola is transparent and comprehensive in its disclosures.

In September 2015, Coca-Cola published a ‘Transparency List’ of 115 ‘Health Professionals and Scientific Experts’ and forty-three ‘Research Projects’ that it sponsored in the USA ( 6 , 7 ) . Following this disclosure, some of Coca-Cola’s subsidiaries and bottlers published similar transparency lists for health and wellness partnerships and financial support of scientific research in the UK ( 8 ) , France ( 9 ) and Germany ( 10 ) , in December of 2015, and in Australia ( 11 ) , New Zealand ( 12 ) and Spain ( 13 ) , in March of 2016 (see online supplementary material 1 for the full lists of health professionals and scientific experts).

Here, using this new instrument, we investigate the following questions:

• 1. Are Coca-Cola’s transparency lists complete?
• 2. How many studies and authors are funded by the Coca-Cola brand?
• 3. Which research topics and interventions are supported by Coca-Cola funding?
• 4. Are Coca-Cola funded researchers declaring their links to the company in their publications?

Materials and methods

Following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, we reviewed research supported by Coca-Cola funding using the Web of Science Core Collection database ( 14 ) . Starting in 2008 Thomson Reuters added funding acknowledgement and competing interest statements to all the bibliographic records of the Science Citation Index Expanded. This retrieves the funding/competing interest paratextual information in the published version of an article as well as distinguishing between a conflict of interest and a funding statement, and identifies the entities that are acknowledged as providing funding for the article – saving the user from having to read the statements and identify the funding sources manually. These changes, in contrast to other existing databases, now enable users to search the database for text strings (e.g. names of corporations) in the funding acknowledgement section, either as a funding agency or simply as part of a declared conflict of interest.

To our knowledge, Web of Science is the only bibliographic database to index this information on a large scale (Scopus developed a similar algorithm, but with a considerably lower coverage of publications and for a shorter time period; and, more recently, PubMed started adding this information to the metadata of the publication records it indexes).

To retrieve metadata from the literature searched, we developed a web scraping tool that crawls the URL address of any search run in the Core Collection database of Web of Science. Our algorithm, written for R software, runs sequentially over each study page in the search results, parses the HTML code and scrapes user-defined fields for each publication (e.g. title, abstract, authors and affiliated institutions), including the funding/competing interest statement and a table compiled by Web of Science that lists all the entities that provided funding for the article, as reported by the authors (the R script for the algorithm is provided in online supplementary material 2).

We searched for all studies that included the string ‘cola’ in the ‘funding text’ field, which indexes the entire funding acknowledgement section as reported in the published manuscript (see Fig. 1 and Appendix 1 for search strategy). This broad search strategy identified 779 articles, published between 2008 and June 2016, and included articles that acknowledged both direct funding and competing interests involving The Coca-Cola Company and all its subsidiaries. In addition, the broad search term ‘cola’ also yielded studies funded by other companies, such as ‘Pepsi-Cola’.

PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) flow diagram for the present systematic review. This PRISMA diagram describes the study selection steps and identifies at what stage we arrived at analytical Samples 1 and 2. Seven hundred and seventy-nine records (i.e. publications) were retrieved from a search on the ‘funding text’ field in Web of Science for any mention of ‘Cola’. From these records, 318 were excluded for not meeting the screening criteria (i.e. the study acknowledging direct receipt of funding from Coca-Cola). After exclusion, we arrive at Sample 1, which contains all studies funded by the Coca-Cola brand. We subset from Sample 1 only those studies funded by The Coca-Cola Company, its affiliates in the USA and those subsidiaries that published transparency lists; this leads to the exclusion of seventy-two studies for not meeting the eligibility criteria, which gives us Sample 2

The questions set out above make an implicit separation between the research funding activities of The Coca-Cola Company and those of the Coca-Cola brand, which includes all subsidiaries and bottlers around the world. With this distinction in mind, we constructed two analytical samples.

The first sample is less restrictive, composed of all studies directly funded by any company or institute part of the Coca-Cola brand that were retrieved from our search. This sample is used to answer question 2 (‘How many studies and authors are funded by the Coca-Cola brand?’).

The second sample is a sub-sample of the first, focusing on those studies funded by The Coca-Cola Company and its philanthropic arms in North America, and by the subsidiaries and bottlers that participated in the ‘Transparency Initiative’. This sample is used to answer the remaining questions (1, 3 and 4).

Below, we describe all steps in the selection of the studies and in the creation of the two analytical samples.

Study selection

The 779 studies produced by our search were screened for the inclusion of the string ‘Coca-Cola’ (or any possible variant, including affiliates of the main company, such as the Beverage Institute of Health and Wellness ( 15 ) ; see Appendix 1 for a list of all variants) as a funding agency. The goal of the initial screening was to parse through the search results and only keep studies that report direct receipt of funding from The Coca-Cola Company or any affiliates (see Fig. 1 ).

This criterion thus excluded 318 studies. These were studies where: (i) the authors only declare a competing interest due to previous relationships with The Coca-Cola Company unrelated to research funding (e.g. speaking engagements or consultancy work); (ii) Coca-Cola’s involvement in the publication was indirect (e.g. via student grants); (iii) the authors acknowledge funding from another ‘cola’, such as ‘Pepsi-Cola’; and (iv) where the algorithm used by Web of Science mistakenly included Coca-Cola as a funding agency, when the funding acknowledgement section did not indicate direct funding by the company to that particular study (this was assessed by manually inspecting all funding statements).

To be eligible for our first sample, studies had to acknowledge funding from The Coca-Cola Company or any of its affiliates, including The Coca-Cola Foundation (TCCF, the philanthropic arm of the company), Coca-Cola North America, The Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness (an organization set up by The Coca-Cola Company to support nutrition research) ( 15 ) and Coca-Cola bottlers or subsidiaries outside the USA. This criterion comprises the totality of the Coca-Cola brand in our data and did not lead to the removal of any further studies. Sample 1 is therefore comprised of 461 studies.

In the second sample, we imposed stricter eligibility criteria to isolate those studies funded by The Coca-Cola Company and its affiliates in the USA, France, Germany, Spain, New Zealand and Australia, the only countries to release records of their research funding efforts in the form of transparency lists of funded scientific experts, which were released in late 2015 and early 2016 (see full lists in online supplementary material 1).

This criterion excluded seventy-two studies that were funded by subsidiaries or bottlers other than the ones listed above. Sample 2 is thus comprised of 389 studies.

To answer the first question, concerning how comprehensive was Coca-Cola’s transparency initiative, following the revelation of its financial backing of the GEBN, we recreated Coca-Cola’s lists of ‘scientific experts’ and ‘research partnerships’ by carefully following the parameters laid out in Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosure ( 6 , 7 ) , using our own data on funding statements retrieved from Web of Science (Sample 1). We then matched our recreated list to the original ones published on Coca-Cola’s websites ( 6 – 13 ) . This was designed to identify any discrepancy that could, potentially, reflect selective disclosure on the Company’s part.

Coca-Cola included in its ‘Research and Partnerships’ lists the names of academics it funded or collaborated with according to the following criteria (these can be found on the company’s websites) ( 6 – 13 ) : (i) funding agreements sourced exclusively from The Coca-Cola Company, The Coca-Cola Foundation, Coca-Cola North America, Coca-Cola South Pacific, Coca-Cola Australia Foundation, Coca-Cola Oceania, Coca-Cola Germany and Coca-Cola Spain; and (ii) activities and studies conducted between January 2010 and December 2015.

To match these criteria, we started with the 461 studies in Sample 1 and excluded the following: (i) studies published before 2010 and after December 2015; (ii) studies funded by Coca-Cola subsidiaries and bottlers, with the exception of those listed above; (iii) studies written as part of research consortia that were themselves funded by The Coca-Cola Company, since the funding link between the company and the publication is indirect (see online supplementary material 1, Supplemental Table 1 for a complete listing of such consortia); and (iv) authors who were not listed as principal or co-investigators on the Coca-Cola grant in the original funding statement, where this information was made available (unfortunately, most funding statements did not identify the main investigator on the grant). We opted for a conservative method of removing studies to guarantee, to the highest degree possible, an approximation to the way Coca-Cola compiled its own lists of funded researchers.

One hundred and thirty-eight studies did not meet the eligibility criteria and were removed from the matching procedure.

It should be noted that although there is a gap between the time funding is awarded and the publication date of a study, which suggests that we should restrict our parameters to publications from 2012 onwards, it is not clear from the information provided by Coca-Cola that authors of research published in 2010 would not be included in its transparency list. In fact, it is the case that some studies yielding publications in 2010 were still ongoing in subsequent years. Furthermore, a large proportion of authors who published in 2010 also appeared in published research later on, which suggests that projects funded by Coca-Cola were likely to have yielded more than one publication over time. Therefore, the method we designed to match our data to Coca-Cola’s lists includes research published from 2010 onwards.

Notwithstanding, to confirm the validity of our method, we used a sub-sample of studies published between 2012 and 2015 to compare with Coca-Cola’s transparency lists; the results lend further support to our findings using studies published from 2010 onwards (see ‘Limitations of the study’ section below).

After exclusion of ineligible studies, the procedure identified 907 authors, responsible for 331 studies that fit the criteria used by Coca-Cola to compile its lists of funded research partnerships. The combined transparency lists published by Coca-Cola in the USA, UK, Australia, France and Germany (Spain and New Zealand did not contain names of individual researchers) named 218 researchers. We then proceeded with matching the names of the 907 authors we identified in our data to the 218 names of researchers listed by Coca-Cola as recipients of its research funding, using whole and approximate string matching with manual verification of the results.

Figure 2 summarizes this iterative method in a PRISMA-type diagram.

Flow diagram of the process to match Web of Science data to Coca-Cola’s transparency lists. This flow-type diagram describes: (i) the steps taken to recreate Coca-Cola’s transparency lists using our data; and (ii) the matching of our recreated list to Coca-Cola’s combined transparency lists. We start with all studies in Sample 1 and begin evaluating them against the parameters that governed Coca-Cola’s lists of scientific experts and researchers it funded, and excluding those that failed to meet the eligibility criteria. In the matching stage, we combined the lists of researchers funded by Coca-Cola in North America, UK, Australia, Germany and France and matched these names to those on the list we created using data from Web of Science. The corresponding author on studies with all unmatched names were surveyed via email and asked about Coca-Cola funding

The second question raised above seeks to reveal the universe of scientific literature funded by Coca-Cola. For this question, we focused on the Coca-Cola brand as a whole, not making any distinction between the research funding activities carried out by the main company in the USA and those of its subsidiaries and bottlers around the world.

To address this question, we employed network analysis tools to visually portray the scope of Coca-Cola’s involvement in funding scientific research, and at the same time compare it with the company’s disclosure following its transparency initiative. We built co-authorship networks for all studies that were funded by the Coca-Cola brand between 2008 and 2016. The diagrams show nodes (authors) linked via edges, which represent the co-authorship of a study. A similar approach has been used in the literature combining a systematic review with co-citation networks, instead of co-authorship networks ( 16 , 17 ) .

Network analysis was paired with text analysis to assess the content of the scientific literature funded by Coca-Cola. In addressing question 3, we shift our focus to the funding endeavours of the Coca-Cola Company and those affiliates that participated in the transparency initiative, and discuss who and what fields of research they funded between 2008 and 2016. We added a new co-authorship network and ran a community search algorithm ( 18 ) to uncover highly cohesive subgroups that may indicate the presence of different research hubs throughout the USA (and abroad).

The algorithm calculates betweenness centrality scores for each tie in the network, a metric that counts the number of shortest paths between all pairs of nodes that pass through each tie. In short, it counts how often a tie is used as a ‘bridge’ to connect, in the shortest way possible, any two pair of nodes. It proceeds by removing the tie with the highest score of betweenness, recalculating tie betweenness centrality and iteratively removing ties with the highest betweenness score until the network becomes disconnected into several subgroups. Once it achieves an optimal number of subgroups, the partitioning of the network is complete and it assigns different colours to each subgroup.

This methodology offers valuable insights on the structure and organization of Coca-Cola’s research enterprise, as it furthers our understanding of its centralization, which actors are important and whether research themes or institutions may play a role in its organization. Furthermore, it puts Coca-Cola’s transparency initiative in perspective, both in terms of scope (how complete is the disclosure) and in terms of relevance (whether the authors the company acknowledge as recipients of funding are central or peripheral players in the network).

To better understand the research themes of Coca-Cola’s funded research (the second part of question 3), we examined the abstracts of all 389 articles that met the screening and eligibility criteria that underpinned Sample 2. Using structural topic modelling ( 19 ) , a variant of the large toolbox of topic modelling estimation methods, generally described as unsupervised machine learning algorithms for probabilistic classification of large text corpora, we uncovered hidden semantic structures, or topics, that give us an insight into the different streams of research that Coca-Cola has funded since 2008.

In a nutshell, topic models estimate latent topics in a bundle of text documents and simultaneously assign the documents to the different topics, probabilistically. The algorithm works on the assumption that a document is composed of a different mixture of topics and estimates the probability distribution of documents to topics; it does this based on the semantic content of each document by leveraging information on the word frequency within and across documents. Thus, documents that share the same semantic structure (i.e. similar distributions of word frequencies) are likely to belong to the same topic.

In online supplementary material 3 we present in greater detail the estimation methods and robustness tests for the models presented here.

In the next section, the results are organized and discussed around each of the research questions set out above.

Testing the completeness of Coca-Cola’s transparency lists

Our search in Web of Science identified a total of 907 authors corresponding to 331 studies. These were the studies that met the eligibility criteria required to match their authors onto Coca-Cola’s transparency lists (for a full list of the studies included in Sample 1, Sample 2 and in the sample used to match against Coca-Cola’s transparency lists, see online supplementary material 1, Supplemental Table 2).

To evaluate the degree of transparency, first we compared the 907 names with the 218 researchers and scientific experts named directly by the company and selected subsidiaries as recipients of its own research funding. Forty-two people appear in both sets (see Fig. 2 ). This corresponds to 20 % of the names on Coca-Cola’s transparency lists and to 4 % of the names listed in Web of Science as authors of Coca-Cola funded publications.

Next we performed a series of robustness checks and tests for alternative possibilities.

First, as only one researcher per publication could be the direct recipient of a grant, we removed all publications involving any of the forty-two authors whom we identified successfully. There still remained 527 authors corresponding to 152 published articles that acknowledge Coca-Cola funding but were not named on Coca-Cola’s transparency lists.

Second, we surveyed via email 131 (fewer than 152 because of overlap) corresponding authors requesting whether they had received funding from Coca-Cola or not during the period 2010 to 2015, using the corresponding email address indicated in the manuscript. Each corresponding author was emailed twice over the course of 20 d. It should be noted that the corresponding author is, in many cases, a junior researcher on a publication, thus unlikely to be the principal investigator on the grant. Eleven per cent (fourteen authors) confirmed Coca-Cola funding, 22 % (twenty-nine authors) denied it and 53 % (sixty-eight authors) did not reply. In cases where the respondent denied funding, we asked who were the primary recipient(s) of the grant. The remaining 14 % of email addresses were no longer valid.

We altered our sample according to the results of the survey in the following manner: (i) in the cases where the respondent denied funding, we removed the respondent’s name from the sample and, in the few cases where the respondent provided the name of the primary recipient(s) of the grant, we kept the latter’s name in the sample; and (ii) in cases where the respondent confirmed receipt of funding, we removed the names of all co-authors on each publication of the respondent in the sample.

After incorporating the results from the survey, our search identified up to 471 authors corresponding to 128 articles whose names do not appear on Coca-Cola’s lists, but whose articles acknowledge funding from the company.

Mapping the universe of Coca-Cola’s research funding: a network analysis

Next, we did a broad search for all published research acknowledging financial support from any member of the Coca-Cola brand (including the main company, subsidiaries, bottlers and other affiliates), for the entire period for which we have data, 2008 to 2016.

Figure 3 depicts a network of co-authorships, where nodes represent authors and ties represent shared publications between them, for all publications that acknowledge funding from the Coca-Cola brand. Thicker lines denote a higher number of co-authored publications between any two nodes. Nodes were sized by degree centrality, a network measure that captures how central is a node in the network by adding up the weights of its ties (in this case, it will reflect the total number of co-authored publications for each author).

Network of linkages between authors of publications acknowledging Coca-Cola related funding. This network graph shows co-authored publications (ties) between authors (nodes), for publications that acknowledge funding from The Coca-Cola Company, The Coca-Cola Foundation, the Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness and any subsidiary or bottler company (e.g. Coca-Cola Brasil). Nodes in red identify authors who appear on Coca-Cola’s transparency lists. Nodes in green identify authors on Coca-Cola funded publications whose names do not appear in Coca-Cola transparency lists. Nodes in purple identify authors on publications funded by Coca-Cola subsidiaries, also not on Coca-Cola’s lists. Nodes are sized by degree centrality (total number of co-authors times the number of shared publications they have)

The colour partitioning of the network allows us to compare Coca-Cola’s disclosure with the known universe of Coca-Cola funded research since 2008. Nodes marked in red represent the forty-two authors whom we were able to match to Coca-Cola’s transparency lists. Nodes in green represent authors on studies (from Sample 2) that declared funding from The Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola North America, Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness and The Coca-Cola Foundation, but who were not acknowledged in the company’s transparency list. Finally, we extend the network to the whole brand (Sample 1) by colouring in purple nodes representing authors of studies funded by Coca-Cola subsidiaries, bottlers or affiliate companies that share the brand name around the world, such as Coca-Cola Brasil and Coca-Cola Hellas, and who were equally absent from those subsidiaries’ transparency lists.

The network analysis reveals that the researchers acknowledged by Coca-Cola, albeit occupying a central position in the graph, represent only a small subset of the universe of research reporting Coca-Cola funding, which involves 1496 different researchers (we assume not all grant recipients) and 12 412 co-authorship ties, corresponding to 461 publications funded by the brand. The network is sufficiently disconnected for us to find several self-contained cliques of researchers, detached from the main component of the graph, and whose names did not feature in any of Coca-Cola’s lists. In other words, Coca-Cola’s transparency list appears to cover only a small portion of research in which the company is involved.

Additionally, the network structure shows several highly dense and autonomous research groups, disconnected from the main component of the network, and with no ties to the researchers acknowledged by the company. In addition, there are other equally central nodes in the network that were not acknowledged by Coca-Cola. This suggests the company is funding several research groups but has acknowledged only a subset.

However, a caveat to this visual assessment of the completeness of Coca-Cola’s lists is that it includes a small portion of publications that precede the start date of these lists (2010) and publications funded by subsidiaries that did not participate in the transparency initiative of the main company.

Who and what is The Coca-Cola Company funding? A topical analysis of abstracts

Now we turn to mapping who and what Coca-Cola is funding, seeking to understand what areas of research and who are the academics getting its financial support.

Table 1 reports the most prolific Coca-Cola funded authors (see online supplementary material 1, Supplemental Table 3 for the top fifteen institutional affiliations; the metadata for the studies included in these two tables are available upon request). As shown in Table 1 , the researcher who has published the most articles with Coca-Cola funding is a former president of the American College of Sports Medicine (S.B.). He has received around $US 5·4 million of research funding to study the role of energy balance at high levels of energy intake ( 7 ) , and he also played a pivotal role in the creation of the GEBN ( 5 ) (see online supplementary material 1, Supplemental Table 4).

Top fifteen most frequent authors in Sample 2

Sample 2 includes only those studies funded by The Coca-Cola Company and its affiliates in the USA, France, Germany, Spain, New Zealand and Australia, the only countries to release records of their research funding efforts in the form of ‘Transparency Lists’ of funded scientific experts, which were released in late 2015 and early 2016 (see full lists in online supplementary material 1). Sample 2 was compiled by the authors using data retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. The metadata for the studies included in this table are available upon request.

Other leading Coca-Cola researchers are: a former Dean of the School of Public Health of West Virginia University (G.H.), who was the Principal Investigator on ‘Energy Flux – are we healthier when energy balance is achieved’ (funded with $US 851 000 by Coca-Cola), which resulted in the Energy Balance Study ( 20 ) , designed to evaluate the impact of energy intake and expenditure on changes in weight; and a member of the American Society for Nutrition and the Canadian Diabetes * who received two unrestricted grants ($US 192 000) in 2014 from Coca-Cola and has argued that there is no convincing evidence that added sugars in the diet have a unique impact on the development of obesity or diabetes ( 21 ) (J.S.). His research showing there is no association between total sugars intake and risk of diabetes ( 22 , 23 ) has informed the Canadian Diabetes Association’s position statements on sugars ( 24 ) .

The large number of Coca-Cola funded studies co-authored by the small group of academics in Table 1 suggests they ought to be central nodes in the network of Coca-Cola funded research. To visualize their centrality, we plotted a network of co-authorships using data from Sample 2, restricted to research directly funded by The Coca-Cola Company, The Coca-Cola Foundation, Coca-Cola North America and the Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness, thus excluding any subsidiaries or bottlers outside the USA (see Fig. 4 ).

Network of shared Coca-Cola funded publications. Nodes are authors, edges represent co-authored publications and are sized by the number of co-authored publications between two nodes. Nodes are coloured by the edge-betweenness community structure algorithm (explained in text); labels represent a network clique of Coca-Cola funded researchers, identified in personal correspondence between academics and Coca-Cola officials obtained through freedom of information requests

In addition to the community search algorithm we ran in this network, as explained in the ‘Analysis’ section, we also applied labels to researchers who were part of a closely affiliated group of academics (with strong ties to Coca-Cola) that was identified in email communications with Coca-Cola officials obtained via requests under states’ open records laws (P Matos Serodio, G Ruskin, M McKee et al ., unpublished results). This offers an exogenous benchmark to evaluate the performance of the network community structure algorithm and to establish the validity of using co-authorship data on Coca-Cola funded publications to shed light on the company’s involvement in funding scientific research. The size of the labels varies with a measure of node betweenness centrality, which shows the number of times a researcher serves as a bridge between any other two researchers in the network – this gives us an idea of how important they are in controlling the flow of information in the network.

The coloured factions portray different research groups funded by Coca-Cola. Their location in the graph may be driven by geographical factors (such as university affiliation) and by area of research – some authors may focus on physical activity while others work on consumption of non-nutritive sweeteners. Examples of such researchers include Joanne Slavin and John Sievenpiper who focus their research on sweeteners; this moves them close together, but far from the core of the network, which is more attentive to topics of physical activity. At the same time, Sievenpiper’s affiliation to the University of Toronto pushes him away from the core of the network, mostly based in the USA.

The match between coloured subgroups in the core of the network and the location of researchers in close contact with Coca-Cola suggests this group of academics was at the heart of the company’s involvement in funding research, and in a position to participate and coordinate studies between different research groups across fields and across borders, connecting otherwise disconnected groups in the graph.

Turning to the themes of the research, we used structural topic modelling. Figure 5 shows the distribution of topics over documents and the seven most probable words for each topic. As shown, topics converge on physical activity, energy intake, weight, diabetes, exercise and obesity, which are central themes in Coca-Cola’s effort to advance a research agenda able to counteract the link between sugar consumption and obesity by providing a secondary mechanism: the lack of physical activity leading to energy imbalance. Energy balance, physical activity, diabetes and obesity topics account for over 50 % of the studies we analysed (for an interactive visualization of the twenty topics estimated see online supplementary material 3, Supplemental Fig. 5).

Distribution of topics in the included literature. Based on an analysis of 389 documents from the structural topic model, this graph shows the percentage of documents assigned to each topic. In a way, it measures the topic’s popularity within the corpus of abstracts we retrieved from Web of Science. It is important to note that, although each abstract was assigned to a single topic in this graph (the most probable topic), they are considered a mixture of topics; however, they often devote more words to a particular topic and the algorithm used that information to assign the text to a single topic. The ratio value denotes, for each abstract, how dominant was the most probable topic v . the second most probable topic; we averaged these out over all abstracts assigned to each topic in the figure. For example, a ratio of 5·7 for topic 16 means that, on average, the weight of topic 16 in those abstracts assigned to it was 5·7 times larger than the second most probable topic in these abstracts. The twenty word stems with highest probability per topic are listed in Supplemental Table 10 in online supplementary material 3. An interactive visualization of the twenty estimated topics is available in Supplemental Fig. 5 in online supplementary material 3

Finally, we evaluate the influence of the Coca-Cola funded publications based on journal impact factors. Table 2 shows the top fifteen journals publishing the greatest numbers of Coca-Cola funded studies. This included Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise (twenty-one articles) and other high-ranked journals such as the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , British Journal of Sports Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association . The first of these is published by the American College of Sports Medicine, a recipient of substantial funding from Coca-Cola ( 26 ) . These respected journals lend these studies both credibility and visibility within the academic community.

Selected journals of publication of the 389 Coca-Cola funded articles in Sample 2

Sample 2 includes only those studies funded by The Coca-Cola Company and its affiliates in the USA, France, Germany, Spain, New Zealand and Australia, the only countries to release records of their research funding efforts in the form of ‘Transparency Lists’ of funded scientific experts, which were released in late 2015 and early 2016 (see full lists in online supplementary material 1). Sample 2 was compiled by the authors using data retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection.

Testing whether Coca-Cola funded researchers declare conflicts of interest

Next we ask whether the academics and scientific experts who are acknowledged by the company as recipients of research funds declare their ties to the company in research publications.

When matching the names of researchers and scientific experts on Coca-Cola’s list to our sample from Web of Science, we failed to account for 176 scientific experts (this includes people who were funded but may not necessarily be academics). These were persons whom Coca-Cola declared as recipients of funding but did not appear in our sample (note we were able to match forty-two names). Possible explanations for this anomaly are that the funded researchers did not disclose their funding sources (whether intentionally or not), disclosed them but the journal did not publish them, did not publish in indexed journals, or were not active academic researchers. To address the last possibility, we then restricted the search further to only those listed on Coca-Cola’s list whom we also were able to confirm were academic researchers (affiliated with an academic institution or actively involved in peer-reviewed research). This yielded thirty-eight confirmed academics. Searching through each of their entire publications’ entries in Web of Science, we were still unable to find any declared conflicts of interest.

Our analysis employed a novel instrument to map the scale, type and persons involved in Coca-Cola’s research networks. It makes a series of important observations. First, it revealed that Coca-Cola’s transparency lists released in the USA ( 6 , 7 ) , the UK ( 8 ) , Australia ( 11 ) , New Zealand ( 12 ) , France ( 9 ) , Germany ( 10 ) and Spain ( 13 ) (see online supplementary material 1, Supplemental Tables 5 to 9) are far from complete. There were 471 authors in 128 studies declaring Coca-Cola funding whose names did not appear in any of the transparency lists. A further thirty-eight researchers were on Coca-Cola’s lists, but their publications indexed in Web of Science failed to declare Coca-Cola funding or any conflict of interest. Second, the topical modelling reveals a pattern of consistent themes across the research publications funded by Coca-Cola, emphasizing physical activity over sugar or energy intake in relation to weight gain, diabetes and obesity.

Limitations of the study

Before interpreting the findings further, we must note several limitations arising from the nature of the data used. First, funding statements rarely identify the principal investigator (or co-investigator) on a grant, which in this case could overestimate the number of authors who appear to have a direct tie to the company. To address this issue, we surveyed the lead authors in each study that acknowledged funding from Coca-Cola and, in the cases where the lead author denied being involved on a Coca-Cola grant, we inquired who were the principal and co-investigators on the grant.

Second, funding statements rarely report the year in which the grant was awarded. It is possible that some studies were awarded grants by the company prior to 2010 but were published only post 2010, which may explain why the author(s) did not appear on Coca-Cola’s transparency lists. However, looking at a subset of articles published in the period 2012–2015, we still found over 400 authors declaring funding from Coca-Cola who were not acknowledged by the company. Furthermore, fourteen authors, involved in twenty studies, confirmed receiving Coca-Cola funding directly to us in the period 2010 to 2015 but were not on Coca-Cola’s lists.

Third, Web of Science only started indexing funding statements for articles published in 2008, which makes this review a small subset of the overall population of Coca-Cola funded studies. However, this asymmetry of information may lead only to an underestimation of the number of researchers funded by Coca-Cola. In addition, our approach is also limited by the fact that Web of Science is currently the only database indexing funding statements in a systematic way, which restricts the literature available for searching (see Appendix 2 for more details).

Fourth, Coca-Cola has amended its transparency lists multiple times. Using website crawling services that store digital archives of the web, we have found that Coca-Cola changed its list of ‘Research and Partnerships’ in the USA at least four times between October 2015 and March 2016. The last change was officially acknowledged by the company as the ‘first update’ to its public disclosure of financial support of scientific research. The update deleted five and added eleven new names to the lists of ‘Health Professionals and Scientific Experts’ and ‘Research and Partnerships’. The results reported above were updated to include the most recent version of all lists published online.

Fifth, authors may incorrectly report funding from The Coca-Cola Company, when it fact it was awarded by a subsidiary or bottler, or indeed awarded by Coca-Cola but to their affiliated institution, not directly funding their publication. Additionally, some researchers may have refused to list their names on Coca-Cola’s website – and although Coca-Cola acknowledges this issue on its website, it also reveals the total amount of funding that was allocated to said researchers was, on aggregate, relatively small: ‘Several individuals with whom we worked in the past have declined to have their names listed. The aggregate amount of funding provided to these individuals over the past five years is approximately $38,000’ ( 6 ) .

Finally, it is possible that there are authors we have missed who were not on Coca-Cola’s list and did not disclose funding in their publications; omission of funding source is, unfortunately, difficult to observe and quantify, making our results likely to be conservative estimates of Coca-Cola’s apparent lack of transparency.

These observations have important implications for managing potential conflicts of interest in research funding. We have learnt from past research that grants from corporations in the tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceutical and gambling industries can have significant effects on the results of published scientific research, although this influence is often denied by those recipients of the industry financial support ( 27 ) . A recent systematic review of systematic reviews on the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain found that industry-sponsored studies were five times more likely to produce results favourable to the companies ( 28 ) . Even in cases where the authors have complete independence to design, implement and analyse the results of a study, the conflict of interests created by industry funding may be enough to compromise the integrity of the conclusions (a recent Cochrane review concluded that standard ‘risk of bias’ assessments could not explain the bias found in pharmaceutical industry-sponsored studies, which suggests a ‘funding bias’ may be a better predictor) ( 29 ) . In the worst-case scenario, bias is introduced to the study design and selection of hypotheses ( 30 , 31 ) .

For policy, our results suggest a general lack of transparency both among funders and researchers. Among industry, despite ostensible efforts of transparency, there remains a significant portion of Coca-Cola funded research that appears to be in the dark. Prior to September 2015, when Coca-Cola published its first transparency list of funded research and partnerships, it is hard to imagine that the public health community and the public at large were fully informed on the extent of Coca-Cola’s involvement in funding research. In this paper, we have demonstrated that even after an important step towards transparency taken by the company, we still know very little about the full scale of Coca-Cola’s funding efforts, let alone of the entire soft drinks industry.

Turning to researchers, our results are consistent with two publicised cases of researchers apparently failing to declare conflicts. One such case involved Jeff Coombes, a professor at the Centre for Research in Exercise, Physical Activity and Health, from the University of Queensland, whose research focuses on using exercise to treat metabolic syndrome. In February of 2016, the Coca-Cola Company reported that he received an ‘unrestricted gift’ of $US 100 000 from the company in 2014 to ‘support ongoing research investigating the effect of exercise intensity on Metabolic Syndrome’ ( 32 ) . However, out of sixty-one publications of Professor Coombes between 2014 and 2016 that are indexed in Web of Science,* the Coca-Cola Company is acknowledged as a funding source on only four occasions, the first in May 2016 (article accepted in April 2016) ( 33 ) , three months after Coca-Cola publicly disclosed the details of Coombes’ grant and the press coverage it generated ( 32 ) . In fact, the funding statement in the article provides a link to the webpage of Coca-Cola Australia’s transparency list.

Another involved Fabrice Bonnet, a diabetes researcher at the Institute for European Expertise in Physiology (IEEP), who led a study between 2012 and 2014 to determine whether daily consumption of sweeteners included in carbonated soft drinks affected insulin sensitivity. Bonnet reported funding from the IEEP when registering a clinical trial on 8 January 2014 entitled ‘Comparison of the Effects of a 12-Week Consumption of Two Carbonated Beverages on Insulin Sensitivity’ ( 34 ) . However, The Coca-Cola Company acknowledged in December 2016, on its French transparency disclosure ( 9 ) , having granted €719 000 to the IEEP for a ‘research project on intense sweeteners’, for the period 2010 to 2014, which comprises the entire length of Bonnet’s study, according to the registered clinical trial ( 34 ) . Bonnet’s clinical trial did not acknowledge the financial support to the IEEP provided by Coca-Cola.

Such a lack of openness calls for reform and consideration of alternative approaches for managing potential conflicts. Currently debates are being held about the involvement of tobacco industries in e-cigarette research ( 35 ) and some academic journals have taken the strong measure of banning tobacco industry-funded studies altogether, arguing that they should be viewed as ‘marketing’ for the industry ( 36 ) . Our findings suggesting a lack of transparency in an industry that has claimed to be fully open, contribute to a climate of distrust. This may warrant the beginnings of a conversation about similar restrictions on research funded by the sugar and related industries.

Research highlights

• There is concern in public health that The Coca-Cola Company may fund research that benefits its corporate interests and diverts attention from the role of sugar-sweetened beverages in the obesity epidemic. • In 2015, The Coca-Cola Company published several lists of health professionals, scientific experts and academic researchers with whom it collaborated and whose research it funded between 2010 and 2015. It is not clear whether these lists are comprehensive. • The Coca-Cola Company, in conjunction with The Coca-Cola Foundation and the Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness, has funded 389 studies between 2008 and 2016, published in 169 journals, involving more than 1000 authors. • Although Coca-Cola took a step towards transparency, our data have shown major gaps and errors in its disclosures of research funding: Coca-Cola has acknowledged only forty-two out of 513 potential investigators on grants awarded by the company. • Coca-Cola predominantly funds research on nutrition, with a focus on physical activity, the concept of ‘energy balance’ and how these two factors relate to obesity and diabetes.

Acknowledgements

Financial support: D.S. and P.M.S. are funded by a European Research Council Grant (number 313590-HRES). D.S. is also funded by the Wellcome Trust. The funders had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this article. The lead author affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned have been disclosed. Conflict of interest: All authors have completed the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors uniform disclosure form (available at http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf ) and declare: no support from any organization for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work . Authorship: P.M.S. wrote the R function to scrape, parse and clean the data. P.M.S., M.M. and D.S. discussed the research design. P.M.S. was responsible for the data analysis and plots. P.M.S., M.M. and D.S. discussed the results and wrote and revised the paper. Ethics of human subject participation: Not required.

Literature searches

• 1. Web of Science search for systematic review using Core Collection database: ft=“cola”
• 2. Web of Science search for variants of ‘Coca-Cola’: fo=“coca-cola” OR fo=“coca cola” OR fo=“coco-cola” OR fo=“cocacola” OR fo= “beverage health & wellness institute” OR fo=“beverage institute for health & wellness” OR fo=“beverage institute for health wellness” OR fo=“beverage institute for health and wellness”

Limitations of Web of Science funding acknowledgement data

The use of Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science Core Collection to study funding sources in academic research is not new ( 37 , 38 ) . However, important limitations have been raised in recent work ( 39 , 40 ) .

Thomson Reuters began to index information contained in the funding acknowledgement section of articles in 2008. This means that the first year with substantial coverage of funding information in published research is 2009. The database also presents other smaller caveats: (i) funding acknowledgement data are covered mainly for the Science Citation Index Expanded database, and not for Social Science Citation Index or Arts and Humanities Citation Index databases; (ii) information is indexed only for publications where the funding text is in English; and (iii) it only indexes information where the paratext includes mentions of ‘funding’ (other kinds of support are ignored).

For our purposes, these are minor caveats, except for the fact that the sample is truncated, since we can look at only a small window of Coca-Cola funding activities because data before 2008 are missing.

However, other concerns have also been raised about the way in which the algorithm determines whether the company listed in the funding text is indeed a funding agency for that study. Lewison and Sullivan ( 40 ) find that the algorithm over-classifies companies as the funding agencies in situations where they are simply included for other monetary arrangements with an author which would usually fall under a conflict of interest, and not a funding contract for that particular study.

We worked around this by reading the funding paratext for each publication and excluding those articles where Coca-Cola is (mistakenly) listed as a funding agency because there is simply a conflict of interest reported in the funding acknowledgement.

Furthermore, another caveat we should note is the inconsistency of use of the author strings across publications. The use of middle names, or first name initials, changes frequently across publications. To illustrate, S. Blair, Steven Blair, S N Blair, Steven N Blair are variants of the same author’s name used across publications. We standardize the author name strings for all documents to avoid duplicates in our analysis.

* Note that the Canadian Diabetes Association became Diabetes Canada on 13 February 2017 ( 25 ) .

* Here we focus on publications indexed by Web of Science. It is possible that publications by Professor Coombes that were not indexed by Web of Science may acknowledge funding from The Coca-Cola Company.

Supplementary material

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Coca-Cola: Preparing for the Next 100 Years

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Extracting Coca-Cola: An Environmental History

In its early days, Coca-Cola established key relationships in the supply chain ranging from natural resources to pharmaceuticals to achieve market dominance.

A charismatic soda and the branding to match, Coca-Cola is more than just a beverage. Today, the Coca-Cola Company is one of the largest food and beverage corporations, reporting nearly $10 billion in profits in 2023 . But, as historian Bartow J. Elmore argues in a 2013 article in Enterprise & Society , the company and its signature product’s rise to dominance from its relatively humble origins in 1886 in the hands of a broke Atlanta pharmacist was no coincidence. Instead, it resulted from a deliberately calculated plan to extract and acquire natural and social resources at minimum cost for maximum profit.

Elmore tracks how, in the early days of the company, Coca-Cola established key relationships in the supply chain ranging from public commodities to Monsanto to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to drive down production costs. Ultimately, Elmore writes, Coca-Cola’s secret formula was a particular brand of capitalism based on the company’s “ability to embed itself in technological supply and distribution systems built, maintained, and financed by others.”

Though the recipe for Coke is famously proprietary, Elmore easily traces the environmental history of the company and beverage’s widespread success through a handful of well-known ingredients, such as water, sugar, caffeine, and coca . Elmore argues that Coca-Cola savvily siphoned resources from public and private entities to cheaply procure these key ingredients and establish a lean, mean global supply chain and market for their product.

Coca-Cola’s tactics began with an ingredient as fundamental as water, which we now experience as freely and widely available. But, in the early twentieth century in America, public commodities such as waterworks were just starting to emerge—and Coca-Cola seized the opportunity to prop up the systems through its franchised bottling model, and, conveniently offload upfront costs of bottling and shipping their “water-dense” product. Beginning in 1900, the company recruited local businessmen to rouse up $3,000 to establish regional franchises that would serve as regional bottling plants. Elmore recounts that many bottlers took out loans to start and consequently relied on the expanding public water systems to save on costs. This cost savings was then passed on to Coca-Cola, “broaden[ing] its bottling empire at low cost.” Indeed, Elmore notes that “as public water systems expanded into less-densely populated areas of the country by the 1910s, so too did Coke’s franchisees.”

Later in the twentieth century, Coca-Cola used a similar tack to expand business abroad. Elmore writes that the company secured foreign assistance loans by “argu[ing] that it could bring hydration to communities lacking basic water infrastructure” such as in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa through its earlier experience supporting American water infrastructure. Reviewing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records, though, Elmore found that “these projects often helped Coke sell bottled water and other products rather than encourage the development of large-scale public water works.”

Most iconically, Coca-Cola used coca leaf extract in their secret recipe—sourced early on from a partnership with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. This, as Elmore puts it, “exposes yet another federal-corporate partnership that enabled Coke to purchase a key ingredient at low cost.” DEA-declassified documents in the National Archives show how Coca-Cola “secure[d] exclusive access to legal coca imports” after coca imports were criminalized in 1914. The FBN gave Coca-Cola “special exemptions” that allowed the company to purchase decocainized coca leaf extract, while denying exemptions for the same ingredient to other buyers.

“By restricting buyer access to coca leaves,” Elmore writes, “the federal government helped to create a monopsony for Coca-Cola,” ensuring they were the only buyers for the “exotic ingredient” and forever linking the substance with the brand.

Elmore outlines how Coca-Cola established similar low-cost and low-commitment relationships to source ingredients like caffeine—initially from agricultural giant Monsanto, then from decaf coffee maker General Foods—or to abdicate social responsibility, such as the endless plastic and aluminum waste their products generate. More broadly, the story of Coca-Cola told from a natural resources perspective demonstrates how, like consumer goods and agriculture, food and beverage production at scale was and is an extractive enterprise with substantial social and environmental impact.

For Elmore, with its emergence at the turn of the twentieth century, Coca-Cola heralds “a new type of corporation that emerged in the Gilded Age,” with few fixed assets but extraordinary market reach. Indeed, a product like Coca-Cola—and many of our processed foods today—“gained life by finding a way to market the excesses of mass-producing industrial firms,” Elmore writes, further distancing consumer habits from their resource-intensive origins.

Three Tips for Teaching

Cooking with Coke . Discuss the spread of the soft drink in the culinary world. Bring your favorite recipe to class!

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How Coca-Cola Disguised Its Influence on Science about Sugar and Health

Published Oct 11, 2017

Coca-Cola quietly funded a research institute out of the University of Colorado designed to persuade people to focus on exercise, not calorie intake, for weight loss strategies.

The Disinformation Playbook

What happened.

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that too much sugar is bad for our health. And Coca-Cola has a history of pouring money into misinformation campaigns aimed at casting doubt on that evidence. One of the company’s tactics has been to fund its own scientific research through in-house research institutes such as the “Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness” established in 2004. The Beverage Institute featured misleading content on its website, confusing the science about sugar consumption and ill-health by focusing on the role of sugar-sweetened beverages in ‘hydration’ and ‘energy balance’ while ignoring these beverages’ links to obesity and metabolic disease. This institute is no longer active as of 2016 , but the tactic lives on in an even more secretive fashion: Coca-Cola and other companies spread disinformation by funding questionable research programs hosted by academic institutions—and then use the names of those reputable establishments and scientists to promote their agenda.

In 2015, the Coca-Cola company gave $1 million to the University of Colorado Foundation, a revenue stream that feeds into the university itself, to fund a research institute called the Global Energy Balance Network. The stated goal of the institute was to provide “a forum for scientists around the globe to come together and generate the knowledge and evidence-based pathways needed to end obesity.” But Coca-Cola’s real goal was to persuade people that they were focusing too much on calories and portion size and not enough on exercise. And the list of contributors to this effort—including University of Colorado faculty and other academic scientists—was riddled with conflicts of interest.

First, as part of the funding arrangement, Coca-Cola was allowed to choose the Global Energy Balance Network’s executives, draft its mission statement, and design its website and even compared their scientific project as “akin to a political campaign.” The company hired academics who had received funding from Coca-Cola and other food companies in the past. James O’Hill co-founded the Global Energy Balance Network and served as president. According to the  Integrity in Science  database, maintained by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Dr. Hill has ties to PepsiCo, McDonald’s, and the Sugar Association. He has also previously received consulting fees from Coca-Cola and other food companies. Before the organization was founded, Coca-Cola had also provided $4 million in research funds to two of its founding members: Dr. Steven N. Blair, exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina, and Gregory A. Hand, dean of the West Virginia University School of Public Health between 2008 and 2015.

The new, Coca-Cola-funded research institute used studies funded by the company to argue that there was “strong evidence” that weight gain can be prevented, not by reducing calorie consumption, “but maintaining an active lifestyle and eating more calories.”

Coca-Cola sought to use the institute to shift the dialogue on obesity away from calorie consumption and toward exercise by funding industry-friendly science. But when the institute’s motives and funding stream were exposed, Coca-Cola announced it would halt operations due to “resource limitations.”

Why it Matters

Research funding by the private sector does not necessarily compromise the scientific work or suggest  that any impropriety has occurred. In this case, however, Coca-Cola’s influence managed to override sensible transparency and safeguards meant to ensure the integrity and independence of research.

Independent assessment is vital to the practice of science, which is why scientists go to such lengths to conduct peer reviews and design “double blind” studies. They know that even their own knowledge of possible outcomes in a research study can unwittingly skew the results. Independent science is too important to achieving good policy outcomes—in this case tackling issues like childhood obesity and diabetes—to allow it to be tainted by even the appearance of a conflict of interest. And public confidence in this kind of work is also vital to its continuance at academic and research institutions that are often publicly funded.

Transparency is the vital first step toward ensuring that purportedly independent research and scientific bodies are truly as advertised—independent and not co-opted by vested interests. The disclosure that Coca-Cola eventually made about its Global Energy Balance Network illuminates this fact. The case illustrates why full disclosure is so important and why we need to work harder to insist that our scientists, medical professionals, and politicians acknowledge who’s backing them and with what kinds of terms so we can more fully assess the independence and integrity of their work.

Further Reading

• “The Coke Side of Life”—More Sugar, Less Science
• Coca-Cola Breaks Pledge Not to Advertise to Kids (Again)
• USDA Nominee Perdue’s Connection to Coca-Cola is Deeper Than Georgia Roots

Related resources

Protecting Government Science from Political Interference

A Democracy, If You Can Keep It

Race and Representation in Battleground Counties

Improving Election Data Transparency

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• Assignment: Climate Change Challenge

Coca-Cola: A Major Part of the Problem, but Working to a Solution

Coca-Cola’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint are a noble endeavor, but the company still has plenty of room for improvement

The reality of climate change is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.  Changing weather patterns, increasing droughts, and rising temperatures are having pronounced impacts on businesses worldwide.  This is especially true for businesses within the global food and beverage industry, whose agricultural inputs are inherently reliant on the predictability and consistency of weather patterns, crop yields, livestock health, and other climate-dependent factors.

The food and beverage industry is the single largest consumer of agricultural raw materials, and climate change endangers its future.  Ironically, however, businesses in this industry have had enormous contributions to greenhouse gas emissions – the ten largest food & beverage companies, if combined, would represent the 25 th most polluting country in the world. [1]

With climate change comes increases in temperature, CO 2 content, and the rate and severity of droughts and floods, all of which threaten both the reliability and predictability of crop yields.  Scientists at NC State and Columbia University have predicted that by 2100 greenhouse gases could reduce crop yields by 30-46% under slow global warming scenarios and 63-82% over rapid global warming scenarios (Exhibit I below provides some context to the expected crop yield changes between now and 2050). [2]  All crops have optimal temperatures for reproductive growth, making reducing and adapting to climate change of utmost importance for food and beverage companies. [3]

Coca-Cola is one such company.  A major, global leader within this industry, Coca-Cola understands the importance of controlling human impact on the environment for the future viability of its business.  Though Coca-Cola does not own or operate any farms, it relies on the agricultural output of those farms (which it receives from its suppliers), to manufacture its end products – half of the company’s spend on procurement goes to its agricultural inputs. [4]   The company relies on millions of tons of fresh fruit, corn, tea, sugar, coffee and other ingredients every year. [5]  Coca-Cola’s long-term success depends on its ability to maintain reliable supply of those products.

However, Coca-Cola is also part of the problem – the company emitted 59 million metric tonnes of GHG in 2010 alone (roughly the size of Norway’s total annual emissions). [6] , [7]

Pathways to Just Digital Future

Given both the importance of climate change on its business and its huge carbon impact to date, Coca-Cola has done a good job in taking steps to boost its long-term sustainability, both for itself and for its peers across its entire value chain.  In 2013, the company announced a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to cut the carbon emissions linked to each of its products by 25% before 2020 (off a 2010 baseline) (i.e., reduce the carbon footprint of the “drink in your hand” by 25%).  This is a comprehensive proposal that focuses on the entire value chain – ingredient sourcing, manufacturing processes, packaging formats, delivery fleet, and refrigeration equipment. [8]

The company has certainly made progress, cutting the CO 2 embedded in the “drink in your hand” by 13% at YE2015, and it has done so through multiple initiatives. [9]  For example, the company has taken drastic measures in reducing the carbon footprint of its commercial fleet.  Coca-Cola has transitioned its transportation vehicles to become the largest heavy-duty hybrid commercial fleet in North America, with over 650 hybrid delivery trucks, and has also begun building a fleet of zero-emission trucks of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) in North America, which currently exceeds 750 vehicles. [10]  In addition, Coca-Cola has emphasized improving the environmental performance of its refrigeration systems with HFC-Free coolers.  The company has spent over $100 million over the past decade to make its coolers more socially responsible, developing devices that reduce electricity use by monitoring usage patterns and adjusting lighting and temperature to maximize energy efficiency. [11]

I applaud Coca-Cola for setting demanding targets for itself and setting a positive example as a leader of an industry that is in dire need of limiting and ultimately reversing its carbon footprint.  While I certainly believe that Coca-Cola has made solid progress on its initiatives to date and is on track for its 25% improvement by 2020, Coca-Cola still needs to de-couple its growth from its carbon footprint.  As a company that continues to look to expand, particularly in emerging markets, it should do everything necessary to make the changes and advancements required such that the company’s future growth does not increase its GHG emissions.  To do so, the company needs not only to increase its energy efficiency, but, more importantly, to make more of an emphasis on renewable energy sources for its manufacturing facilities.  Eventually, I hope the company can eventually come to rely more on clean energy technologies like wind, photovoltaic, hydraulic and biomass for its manufacturing – after all, it’s long-term future depends on it.

Word Count: 771

[1] Oxfam Canaca, “Big ten food companies emitting as much as the ‘world’s 25th most polluting country,’” https://www.oxfam.ca/news/big-ten-food-companies-co2-emissions-2014-05-20 .

[2] World Resources Institute, “The Global Food Challenge Explained in 18 Graphics,” http://www.wri.org/blog/2013/12/global-food-challenge-explained-18-graphics .

[3] EPA, “Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply,” https://www.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply .

[4] Coca-Cola, “COP21: Climate Talks Should Include Crops,” http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coca-cola-unbottled/cop21-series–climate-talks-should-include-crops .

[5] Coca-Cola, “Sustainable Agriculture,” http://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainabilityreport/world/sustainable-agriculture.html .

[6] Coca-Cola, “2012/2013 Climate Protection Report,” http://assets.coca-colacompany.com/74/9d/4a39e1f6490bad6c44ebc3da4dec/2013-climate-report-pdf.pdf .

[7] The World Bank, “CO2 emissions (kt),” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.KT?name_desc=false .

[8] The White House, “White House Announces Additional Commitments to the American Business Act on Climate Pledge,” https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/30/white-house-announces-additional-commitments-american-business-act .

[9] Coca-Cola, “An Ambitious Goal: Reducing Carbon in Our Value Chain,” http://www.coca-colacompany.com/an-ambitious-new-goal-reducing-carbon-in-our-value-chain .

[10] Coca-Cola, “Sustainability Update: Energy Efficiency and Climate Protection,” http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/sustainability-update-energy-efficiency-and-climate-protection .

[11] Coca-Cola, “2014/2015 Sustainability Report,” http://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/journey/us/en/private/fileassets/pdf/2015/09/2014-2015-sustainability-report.pdf .

Student comments on Coca-Cola: A Major Part of the Problem, but Working to a Solution

Coming from the beverage industry I can attest that sustainability is top of mind both from a corporate responsibility standpoint and from the potential it has to reduce costs in the long-term. I agree with your assessment that there needs to be improvement across the entire value chain. I know that at Red Bull we are following Coca Cola’s lead and have introduced hybrid and electric trucks to our Red Bull-owned distribution fleets and have eliminated coolers containing HFC from our POS supply. For more on Red Bull’s sustainability practices see: http://energydrink-us.redbull.com/en/can-lifecycle

I’m curious if you came across any research on how Coca-Cola is working to reduce waste in their manufacturing and distribution plants. This was a huge challenge for us at Red Bull since our products do have expiration dates and failure to properly forecast can result in millions of dollars worth of expired goods sitting in warehouses. I wonder what practices Coca-Cola has put in place to mitigate this.

Prior to coming to HBS, I worked for a startup in Boston that was founded on the basis of trying to cut out the greenhouse gas emissions required to ship drinks to the consumer. The startup manufactured a machine that drew in tap water, and turned it into a variety of sparkling and flavored waters, which consumers would then dispense into their own water bottles. I’m glad to hear that Coca-Cola is working to reduce the carbon footprint of its commercial fleet by adding more eco-friendly vehicles.

However, one are Coca-Cola can not control is what happens to their products after the consumer purchases it. Will the consumer recycle the bottle or can? As the price of oil decreases, many recycling facilities are shutting down, as it is not worth it to recycle ( http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2016/02/18/cheap-oil-recycling-industry/ ). It would be great to see Coca-Cola working with these facilities to try and increase recycling rates, or coming up with an alternate solution.

Great read. As you mentioned, Coca-Cola’s ambitions are admirable, but I wonder whether a more targeted approach to reducing GHG emissions would serve the company better. The Company’s scale seems to beget a multi-pronged energy reducing strategy, ranging from sourcing to delivery. And yet, I am sure that out of all the strategies Coca-Cola is employing, there is one that is dollar-for-reduced-emission most effective. Purely from an economic standpoint, I would suggest Coca-Cola maximize this program first, before branching into other segments, at least in the short-term. I imagine that the multi-pronged approach is consequence of having to satisfy the energy-reducing desires inherent in having a plethora of constituents. Long-term, I think you hit the nail on the head. Coca-Cola needs to make an emphasis of using clean energy in its plants, but here the Company is constrained by the technology and renewable energy supplies available. Unless Coca-Cola were to itself invest in these renewable technologies, which I would vehemently oppose if I were a shareholder.

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Is Trending Stock CocaCola Company (The) (KO) a Buy Now?

Coca-Cola ( KO Quick Quote KO - Free Report ) has been one of the most searched-for stocks on Zacks.com lately. So, you might want to look at some of the facts that could shape the stock's performance in the near term.

Over the past month, shares of this world's largest beverage maker have returned +3.1%, compared to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +1.3% change. During this period, the Zacks Beverages - Soft drinks industry, which Coca-Cola falls in, has gained 2.9%. The key question now is: What could be the stock's future direction?

Although media reports or rumors about a significant change in a company's business prospects usually cause its stock to trend and lead to an immediate price change, there are always certain fundamental factors that ultimately drive the buy-and-hold decision.

Revisions to Earnings Estimates

Here at Zacks, we prioritize appraising the change in the projection of a company's future earnings over anything else. That's because we believe the present value of its future stream of earnings is what determines the fair value for its stock.

We essentially look at how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to reflect the impact of the latest business trends. And if earnings estimates go up for a company, the fair value for its stock goes up. A higher fair value than the current market price drives investors' interest in buying the stock, leading to its price moving higher. This is why empirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock price movements.

For the current quarter, Coca-Cola is expected to post earnings of $0.75 per share, indicating a change of +1.4% from the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged over the last 30 days.

For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $2.85 points to a change of +6% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has remained unchanged.

For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $3.03 indicates a change of +6.3% from what Coca-Cola is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed +0.1%.

With an impressive externally audited track record , our proprietary stock rating tool -- the Zacks Rank -- is a more conclusive indicator of a stock's near-term price performance, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates , has resulted in a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for Coca-Cola.

The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:

12 Month EPS

Due to inactivity, you will be signed out in approximately:

The Coca-Cola Company Research Paper

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Executive Summary

The main objective of this research paper is to carry out a comprehensive analysis about the Coca-Cola Company. In so doing, the paper would focus on exemplifying an appropriate company background of Coca-Cola, considering the financial overview of the company, and most importantly, formulating a problem statement of the company along with the historical background of the problem as well as the main players and actors who contributed to the problem.

Furthermore, the paper would illustrate the potential challenges, issues, and prospects of the company with consideration of the discussion of the related literature, alternative solutions and their implementations, and implications for future use. Finally, the paper shall focus on accumulating pertinent recommendations in conjunction with a relevant conclusion.

Company Background: Overview

Bloomberg Businessweek (1) suggests that the Coca-Cola Company produces, allocates, and delivers nonalcoholic beverages and syrups internationally and it is predominantly renowned for the production of sparkling and still beverages; to specify, the business’s sparkling beverages comprise of nonalcoholic ready-to-drink beverages with carbonation, for example, energy drinks, and carbonated waters and flavored waters.

Some of its other products from still beverages comprise nonalcoholic drinks without carbonation, together noncarbonated saccharine savored waters with enhanced quality, cloister free energy-drinks, lucrative juices, and lovely savored drinks, including ready-to-drink teas, high quality coffees, and superior sports drinks; moreover, the business also offers fountain syrups, and other healthy food supplements those are favored by the health conscious customers.

With the glory of running such as a successful business for over centuries, this US-based company possesses a very bold supply chain offering diversified products to consumers all over the Saudi Arabia creating a passion that fastens the billions of its enthusiasts.

Problem Statement

Coca-Cola Company the worlds leading multinational company are continuing its global operation in more than two hundred countries in the soft drink and beverage sector with stronger brand position. Through out the global operation Coca Cola Company has evidenced huge crisis from the national and international legislation, competitors, and diversified culture and disturbed its operation and profitability but none can keep any stopple to its progress.

Middle East and GGC countries are also a vital market for this multinational company (MNC) but also suffered from different crisis starting from the gulf war while US sanctions prohibited their national MNCs to do business in some Arab counties that seriously injured the company in this region (ECOS 10). Later on gulf crisis, the MNC faced some other crisis concerning the religious sentiments of the Arabs. In a promotional campaign poster with Muslim retailer is saying her prayer in front of Coca Cola’s monogram in the wall rather than the Kaba while another computer graphics presented “No Makkah- No Mohammed” – that generated serious public protest in the Arab world that leads to a of Coke in Saudi Arabia (Slide Share Inc 1).

Starting from Arab Israel conflict in sixties, Coca-Cola evidenced a long ban in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and after long interval Coca Cola reentered in the Saudi Arabia market in 1988 by joining venturing with previous center part Olayan Group but the operation don’t goes smooth (The Olayan Group 1).

The Coca-Cola Company Inc would like to explore its operation in Middle East specially to strengthening its Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Saudi Arabia (CCBCSA). In Saudi Arabia, with this view the management has engaged this researcher to present a report on the company.

Research Objectives & Research Question

The main objective of this report is to examine the operational performance and strategies of Coca-Cola in its global operation and especially in Saudi Arabia to understand and identify the crisis and challenges that belongs to the company and how the company’s strategy would respond to them.

This investigation continues on the strategic implication of the company in global operation with the aim to sustaining its market leader position among their competitors’ in the global market with their product and services with high degrees of attentiveness and particularly argued privileged levels of profitability.

This report has aimed to explore the effectiveness of global strategies by considering strategic tools and parameters and assess how the Coca-Cola Company prolonged its leading position. To do so, this report also deals with few imperative research questions as follows:

• How does theoretical framework of the strategic planning works on development of Coca-Cola Company?
• How Coca-Cola Company designed their strategic planning to become a leader in international soft drinks and beverage market?
• To what degree the implementations of existing and alternative policy can success Coca-Cola Company’s mission and vision in Saudi Arabia?
• What extent do the Coca-Cola Company assessed on competitive advantage?
• To what extent it is possible for the company to implement their strategy in global recessional economy.

Historical Background of the Problem or Contributing Factors

Williston (2) pointed out that the Coca-Cola Company has elongated complex historical background with allegation of aligning with Nazi party during World War II and its German operation evidenced blamed for anti-Semitism.

In 1936, the Coca-Cola Company sponsored the notorious Nazi showcase Olympics which most of the countries refuse to take part and up to 1939, the company operated forty-three bottling plants along with six hundred distributor channels within Nazi Germany. In the post era of World War II, the company’s global operation seriously hampered for its wartime disputed strategy and brand Coca-Cola faced worldwide boycotts in many counties.

During the epidemic of war Max Keith, the German operator of Coca-Cola developed Fanta, which the company buyout in sixties and the legend marketing campaign of the company successfully rub out the blame of Nazis integration from the public mind but history never, excuse Coca-Cola for its notorious role.

The Coca-Cola Company started its operation of bottling in Saudi Arabia during 1950 but the establishment of Israel, US favor to Israel and the company’s secret pact with Jewish spread out boycotting Coca-Cola and the Saudi Arabia Operation propounded in 1963 (The Olayan Group 10).

The Coca-Cola boycotts in the Arab world seriously damaged the companies’ bottling plants in Middle East and several studies demonstrated that the mass peoples’ boycott of US goods in this region has donated at least 55% turn down of US exports towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) during 1998 to 2002.

The Olayan Group is Saudi Arabian multinational company consisting with fifty business entries served for manufacturing, distribution as well as project financing and the Coca-Cola Company reentered in Saudi Arabia through a joint venture in 1988 under the banner CCBCSA. Olayan Group engaged its highest effort to recover Saudi Arabia Market after twenty-five years absence by enforcing corporate crisis management, entrepreneurship, and persistent commitment to growth including national and global values.

The excellent operation of CCBCSA has enabled the Coca-cola to recover 30 % of the beverage and soft drink market of KSA with inspiring growth in the GCC counties within 2000 by producing Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite. CCBCSA introduced state of the earth technology in its production plant including IT integrated management at 30 distribution channels all over KSA and above 1400 employees that serve a strong customer base (The Olayan Group 1).

Saudi Arabia: Crisis Management

TRACCS (1) argued that the crisis management drives still prolonged to Coca-Cola after the reentry of the company in KSA while in 2000, the Life Magazine bring into public views a Coca-Cola promotional photograph a Cameroonian Muslim salesperson saying his Namaz keeping Mecca and Kaba at his back but bending his head in front of Cocoa-Cola cooler.

The portrait has captioned with the slogan that “Muslims always look for spiritual refreshment”, it is not clear whether the happing was an intentional hit to the Islamic sentiment or a malicious blander of the R&D of Coca-Cola, but the fact faired worldwide Muslim protest. The anti-Islamic propaganda of the company swiftly spread out in KSA, different Muslim activists and student organizations in the US University campuses urged to boycott of Coca-Cola in KSA.

The situation was deteriorating quickly but the local Agent of Coca-Cola, the Olayan Group tactically take control on the fact and communicated with the headquarter of Coca-Cola to make safe by a written exculpation along with apology from the Life Magazine by obviously mentioning that Coca-Cola never done any thing with that photograph.

Within two days headquarter arranged such a document from the Life Magazine and published a protest in the Newspaper from New York, the same copy was translated into Arabic and published in the local Newspapers and distributed in the University campuses in KSA and thus the crisis was managed.

In 2000, Coca-Cola slapped with a diverse religious crisis in Saudi Arabia while some Muslim identified that the computer graphics of reversed Logo of Coca-Cola looks like Arabic alphabets and spelled as “No Makkah-No Mohammed’”. This time same storm of protest flourished in KSA and argued for boycotting US products and Coca-Cola at the most wanted object of attack and the market of Saudi Arabia become destabilized.

The local agent has called to mitigating the crisis responding to negative propaganda against the Coca-Cola along with setting a stopple to such false allegation. The local agent urged to the media due to the irrationality of the false allegation offensively caused from baseless rumors, they formed an investigation team with legend pundits and linguistic professors.

The report of the investigation pointed that the logo of Coca-Cola had designed long before in 1880 while the company operates only in the domestic market as a soft drink while there were no question to integrating anti-Islamic thoughts. Both the electronic and print media responded positively, some of the newspapers published cover concerning the real fact that contributed Coca-Cola to overcome the raised scandal against the company.

The Main Players or Actors Who Contributed To This Problem

For the presented case – 1, it is clear that clear that the local agent of Coca-Cola has successfully managed the risks with the help of headquarter but the fact that goes through promotional campaign in Cameron is malicious evidence for which the main player is the R&D department of Coca-Cola that has forgotten to respect diversified culture. Being a large MNC, Coca-Cola has to take care of maintaining ethical and social responsibility as an integral element of its strategic management process for the operation both home and abroad.

Godiwalla (5) added that the socio-cultural environments in which the MNC operates are continuously changing with time where the MNC needed to respond properly for it ethical and along with CSR issues while the socio-cultural environments consists with major three levels as global, regional and home country.

It is natural that sometimes the home country at headquarters’ couture could be far different and conflicting to the operating country; in that case, MNCs must take care to the host country’s culture and ethic and in this aspect where Coca-Cola evidenced enough lacking to meeting the industry norms in KSA.

In the both cases, to publicize the scandal in media, there are possibilities to have the involvement of competitors. The most renowned competitor of Coca-Cola is the Pepsi who has enjoyed the Saudi market along in the absence of Coca-Cola, but for Saudi Arabia and the Middle East both the competitors are most friendly to protect common interest due to different boycotts in this region.

Another possible main players or an actor who contributed to this problem is Macca-Cola. Rarick (1) exposed that the Macca-Cola came in the Saudi Arabia market in 2002 addressing the un-Islamic attitude of Coca-Cola and the owner of Macca-Cola is a Muslim political activist from French.

Mecca-Cola used the name of the birthplace of the founder of Islam, which has considered as a holy place for the Mohammedans, and emotionally blackmailed the religious sentiment. It also branded another product Zamzam Cola that already gained enough popularity in Iran, Bahrain and other Arab countries just patronizing anti-American sentiment in this region.

Another new player also trying to gain a share in the soft drink market of KSA by using religious sentiment named ‘Qibla-Cola’, which is an US, based company, but Islamic leveled.

Challenges, Issues, and Prospects

Due to an US leveled MNC; the Challenge of Coca-Cola Company is unavoidably concerned with the challenges of USA in Saudi Arabia. CCI (1) pointed out that it is the pick time for America to take into account how the people of rest of the world observe present America, what are major changes of public perception towards Americana during nineties, how the isolation and social life of American are changing, and anti-American moves are flourishing globally.

Until and unless America would change its foreign policy, the US brands would face raising challenge of decreasing sales revenue like coca-cola.

Connecting to the Twin Tower attack on September 11, 2001, the US and Saudi Arabia has been deteriorating and that like a cold war situation while USA blame KSA for financing the terrorists as Al-Qaeda’s chief is a Saudi citizen.

The public perception in this region is that the Al-Qaeda is a creation of America and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was a preplanned drama of Americans that was staged to undermine the Arab world to exploit their petroleum resources. The American aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, threats to Iran all those are interlinked to the US-KSA relation those directly impacted US brands like Coca-Cola in this region (MEPC 7).

Rather than the political issues there are some other challenges those Coco-Cola has been facing in Saudi Arabia and rest of the globe.

Favaro, Tim, and David (1) pointed out that the retailing soft drinks have a great challenge during the recession due to the exaggerated home values seriously impact on the customers. During the recession, the interest rate turns to zero and credits are available for free of cost while the raising unprecedented levels seriously decrease the consumer’s spending.

The soft drinks have to have face challenges by responding uncompromisingly accumulating new outlets, introducing new concepts, driving to the international market and organizing online presence retaliates could take the challenges. As a leading soft drinks Coca-Cola has to drive in the market with such challenges.

The Coca-Cola Company (5) pointed out that the soft drinks industries are acknowledged as dead set against recession, but the present U.S. recessionary economy has sink it’s teeth into the profits of world’s prevalent beverage giant like Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola Company proclaimed that its sales were downturn in December 2008 due to some of its supply chains are facing worst monthly returns among the last five years and if the situation continue any more then there is doubt to say that the biggest fast food has been impacted by recession. Coca-Cola has also argued that elevated food prices, reduced speed of customer expenditure coupled with the downturn of housing market that resulted lower sales in global operation.

The company also identified pure water resource, raising health consciousness of customers, increasing competition in the global market, shifting beverages business environment, exchange rate, energy crisis, increasing cost and decreasing profitability and their major issue of challenge.

USCIB (1) pointed out that Coca-Cola Company has been overcome the punch of credit crush while the Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Muhtar Kenthe also added that the company has noteworthy growth in 2008 particularly where 73% of the revenue and 81% of its profit from overseas market.

The soft drink industry possibly would gain an enhanced situation with no serious impact of global financial crisis as well as considerable increase in food prices but Coca-Cola has been positioned against some recession due to job cut and reduced income globally.

Under the recessionary economy, people consider more than twice before spending their money about the justification of expenditure while Amidon (13) mentioned that under the recessionary economy the return on assets of Coca-Cola has reduced 3% in 2008 in relation to previous year 2007.

Amidon (5) also reported that Coca-Cola has gained a profit slight higher than its expectation but overall growth rate decreased notably. In 2008, due to the global financial crisis and its consequential recession, the company reported a remarkable loss of US$ 874 million while the company’s debt-to-equity ratio decreased 0.979 or 97.9% in global operation.

It is important to note that the soft drinks industry is indeed prospective in Saudi Arabia because the public demand for such beverages remains more or less inelastic in most of the cases except of any sudden influence by recessionary impact.

In context, Coca-Cola Company has a number of prospects for carrying out its business operations in Saudi Arabia for enlarging non-carbonated category, which is growing in a fast pace (the international non-carbonated drinks market grew by 7.5% in first quarter of 2005, whereas in 2007, Coca-Cola announced a 7% augmentation in its Powerade-sport-drink and 14% augmentation in Minute Maid juice).

Conversely, apart from Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola has achieved significant growth in main emerging-markets like Russia, China, and Brazil as demand for soft drinks and beverages at those nations raised rapidly in current times owing to their economic-growth (unit volume increased by 11% in 2006 in North Asia, Eurasia, and Middle East due to mainly for growth of China and Russia).

In recent years, with number of international sporting events rising, the prospect of Coca-Cola to sponsor those events and to enhance its brand name is increasing as well; it is arguable that this method of brand promotion is a good technique to reach the target customer.

To illustrate this argument, it is essential to state that the company has recently sponsored the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, and 2010 FIFA Football World Cup of South Africa that altogether brought a huge success for the company’s image.

Discussion of the Related Literature

Coca-Cola operates on a local-scale in every community of KSA and the world constructing widespread-accessibility with local-focus owing to potency of Coca‑Cola’s organizational structure that encompasses more than 300 bottling-partners internationally who work closely with customers like grocery-stores, restaurants, street-vendors, convenience-stores, movie-theaters, and amusement parks, who in turn sell its products to final-consumers at a rate of 1.6 billion servings-a-day. This reflects the fact that this company indeed possesses a very strong organizational structure as illustrated in the figure below:

Figure 1: Organizational Chart of Coca-Cola

Source: Self generated from Girard (5)

Coca-Cola’s products are consumer products, and are rather responsive to consumer’s disposable income; therefore, the company’s management reports two possibilities that serve to figure out its arrangement related to this factor – first, consumers think soft drinks as inexpensive pleasure and so even in temporary environment of steady or slightly dwindling disposable income, consumers are unlikely to relinquish soft drinks.

Second, Coca-Cola scrutinizes disposable income in over 200 countries including Saudi Arabia where it sells soft drinks; this information suggests that disposable income is gradually rising around the world and that individual consumers are eventual buyers of soft drinks; additionally, Coca-Cola interprets this to mean more purchases of consumer products, particularly in countries where consumer product purchasing has been negligible.

Nevertheless, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s real ‘buyers’ have been neighbouring bottlers who are either franchised or owned, particularly in the case of Coca-Cola; it is arguable that whilst Coca-Cola and its competitors release their franchises, those bottlers in turn develop the ‘channel’ in the course of which these comprehensive beverage brands attain the local customers even in the rural areas.

Environment Analysis of Coca-Cola in Saudi Arabia

In order to convey an assessment of Coca-Cola’s operations in the Saudi Arabian business environment, it is imperative to consider a number of factors such as the country’s demographics, economic, political, socio-cultural, technological factors:

Figure 2: External Environment of Coca-Cola Operation

Source: Self-generated

Demographic Factors

It is crucial for Coca-Cola Company to examine the demographic features of the country to ensure that it is undertaking effective tactical steps. In 2010, Saudi Arabia had a total population of 25,731,776; the average age of the total population was 24.9 years (with an average of 26 years in men, and 23.4 years in women) and a populace growth rate of 1.548 percent annually.

Recently, the birth rate of the country is 19.43 births per 1000 people and death rate is 3.34 deaths per 1000 people; moreover, the net migration rate of Saudi Arabia is -0.61 migrants per 1000 people. The urban inhabitants represent 82 percent of the total population with a rate urbanisation of 2.5 percent; the life expectancy of the total population is 73.87 years and total fertility rate is 2.35children per woman.

According to Indexmundi (1), the government expends about 5.7percent of the total gross domestic product for education purposes of Saudi Arabia and it is arguable that the literacy rate of the total population is 78.8 percent. The following table shows the age configuration of the total Saudi Arabian population:

Table 2: Age Configuration of the Saudi Arabian Population

Source: Self-generated from Indexmundi (1)

Whilst carrying out the operations in Saudi Arabia, another vital issue is for Coca-Cola to make sure that it has the appropriate preparations and competencies to serve people from every ethnic background. The table below illustrates the languages, literacy rates, ethnic, and the religious groups present in the country:

Table 3: Religious and Ethnic Groups

Economic Factors

Since the impact of the global financial crisis was not excessive in the KSA, Coca Cola’s operation over there had no severe hindrances by this economic determinant. However, the company suffered significantly by the recession from its operations in the rest part of the world.

The 2010 fiscal year substantiated to be rather complicated for the company because of the continuance of the recessionary affect that the company faced in 2008 to 2009 period creating difficult general retail environments for all of its trading entities. As per Yahoo Finance (1), during this time, the share prices of the company faced a sudden slump as shown in the figure below:

Figure 3: Basic Chart of Coca-Cola

Source: Yahoo Finance (1)

In spite of these tough situations, Coca-Cola engendered a quite remarkable development in the income and started to revive back its stock prices.

Political/legal Factors

The political matters can play a significant role in the entire process of Coca-Cola’s KSA operation, consequently affecting its producing, allocating, and retailing activities to the final consumers; the changes in political environment could affect this industry accordingly through both direct and indirect link.

Governmental instabilities, strikes, political violence, state of emergency, etc can for example, severely affect the business environment of the soft drinks industry in the country. On the other hand, the company always need to comply with all the lawful barriers including complying with the Islamic laws, environmental and labour legislations, and many other rules and regulations as well.

Socio-cultural Factors

The Saudi Arabian population is a quite conservative and sensitive in terms of adoptions of religious values. Being a multinational-Company, it has been in many instances quite difficult for Coca-Cola to adapt all the socio-cultural issues of the country and behave in accordance to the societal and communal attitudes towards marketing activities and advertisements of the company.

Technological Factors

The company believes that in this rapidly changing competitive world it is essential for its Saudi Arabian division to adapt the latest technological infrastructure to gain competitive advantage. Therefore, its IT department constantly works for ensuring the greatest technological assistance in this market. Moreover, it is imperative to note that the company has hi-tech instruments that help it in rapid production in KSA.

Core Competencies of Coca-Cola

Apart from the fact that the company possess a well-built organisational culture, many other factors exists that enhances the company’s position not only in Saudi Arabia, but also in the global context. These factors include the core competencies of Coca-Cola Company that provides it with competitive advantages over the rival businesses. Some such core competencies have outlined below.

• Marketing: Coca-Cola has considered as one of the instigators of contemporary marketing model; throughout its long history of marketing activities, it has pioneered many innovative advertising techniques and styles to capture market and it was the first company to offer a gimmick with its product. In 1900, this company started presenting its signature drink as a delicious and refreshing formula and this slogan has repeated for over the century of advertising Coke in the globe; in fact, through its powerful marketing campaigns, it has created an image that has reflected in what customers think of when they buy Coke;
• mySAP: Coca-Cola turned to the Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM) competencies of mySAPTM Financials and mySAPTM Business-Intelligence (mySAP BI) to manage the task of running its regular operations by using the mySAPcomTM platform internationally; SAP SEM solutions has integrated strongly with Coke’s transaction system to consolidate financials, power financial-planning, and provide comprehensive view of corporate financial performance across the organizational-structure. This strategic approach of the Coca-Cola Company has played a significant role in enhancing its position in Saudi Arabia and in the global context.
• Innovation: Coca-Cola has been able to survive and grow in an ever-changing market because of its capacity to methodically innovate and distribute new products; in 1990s, it showed earnings growth of 15 to 20 percent per year, and it was apparent that the market was changing – to cope up with these changes, Coca-Cola transformed into a total beverage company.
• Size: the large organizational structure of the company allows it to employ huge distributors in KSA who have the capacity to deal with stadium, universities, and school systems to include them in Coca-Cola’s customer base; these distributors possess capability to carry out massive-purchases that significantly lowers cost; moreover, Coca-Cola’s has come up with an effective customer management-scheme to remain competitive.
• Distribution channels: by means of a powerful distribution network throughout KSA and the global village, there are rather a very few places left in the world where the products of this company has not reached yet. To simplify, even though Coca-Cola is an industry giant with a global presence, the fact that the availability of its products remain unswerving even in the remote places of the world has ensured by the widespread supply chain of the company.

Strategic Analysis of Coca-Cola Company

Kotler and Armstrong (79) argued that strategic options are coordinated and interrelated set of proceedings that has designed for utilizing the core capacities and competencies for achieving the competitive advantage. Therefore, according to the standard model, Coca-Cola generates numerous strategic options in Saudi Arabia by some systematic phases from business-level to co-operative strategy, which has shown in the following figure.

Figure 4: Primary phases of formulating strategy

Source: Self-generated from Kotler and Armstrong (79)

• Business-level strategy: Coca-Cola Company could generate this type of strategy for KSA by using Porter’s generic strategy as below-

Figure 5: Porter’s generic strategy for Coca-Cola Company

If it follows the cost leadership strategy, Coca-Cola will be able to provide its beverages at the lowest costs in relation to other competitors’ like PepsiCo or Mecca Cola; on the other hand, if it follows the differentiation strategy, it can deliver unique attributes and features to the target customers. Here, Coca-Cola can offer the finest colas, juices, carbonated, and non-carbonated drinks or other items through unique tastes, flavors, and nature that would be much better than some other competitors like PepsiCo does. The formulation of differentiation strategy has shown as the following-

Figure 6: Porter’s generic strategy for Coca-Cola Company

Self-generated from Kotler and Armstrong (79)

• Competitive dynamics: at this stage, Coca-Cola can attempt to create competitive dynamics for its KSA business that comes from a series of competitive actions and responses among the competitors within the ready- to- drink beverage industry which may be affected by a number of reasons, like- similarity of resources, relative size of the company, innovation, quality and so on.
• Corporate- level strategy: this strategy is important to decide the structure of the company; this concept focuses on diversification that involves the Coca-Cola retail segment offerings and the diversified sales mix of its beverage items.
• Issues of production
• Demand condition
• Connected and supporting industries
• Its strategy, structure, and rivalry
• By composition of strategic alliances in Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola can combine the resources, capabilities, and core competencies with other firms for gaining the mutual interest in designing, distributing, and producing goods.
• Through joint- ventures, it can enjoy benefits by the combination of assets as it is doing now. Nevertheless, Coca-Cola should consider following things before incorporating the strategies, which includes the following-
• Internal service quality: In Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola’s internal quality has maintained by the path of higher employee selection and training process, neat and clean workplace, quality work environment, higher salary and strong support for those who are dealing with the customer’s and franchisee.
• Satisfied and Productive Service Employees: Employees of Coca-Cola are more satisfied, dependable, and hard working because they draw higher remuneration then other companies.
• Greater service value: Coca-Cola affords more effective and well-organized customer value creation and service delivery for the Saudi Arabian market; as a result, Coca-Cola service value is greater than many of its competitors.
• Customer Satisfaction and Unique Customers: Coca-Cola always struggles to convince all of their customers in KSA; therefore, each an every customer is significant and loyal to them. They believe that if they can satisfy them they in future they will purchase their foods and refer other customers.

Present Perspective of CCBCSA

Olayan Group that formed CCBCSA joint venturing with Coca-Cola is a major giant of Saudi privates sector and engaged its highest effort to establish this US brand in Saudi Arabia through localization strategy. Khaled Olayan, the chairperson of the Olayan Group, argued that in working as an agent of Coca-Cola, this group has constructed and maintained a wonderful network of partnerships and relationships some of which are working together for more than decades; he further added that it constantly strives to strengthen existing relationships in an even better position to assure operational proficiency. The Olayan Group (3) suggested that it maintains well-trained employees, advanced technological support, impressive administrative control, as well as strong delivery systems in order to ensure better performance of Coca-Cola in Saudi Arabian market. The group believes in the fact that Coca-Cola has an outstanding brand reputation and prominent image that assists it to increase its profit gradually; in addition, it appreciates that apart from regular customers, new customers are also important to develop company’s market segments and that to retain and attract customers it has popularity for its superior customer service. In addressing the factors that the Saudis appreciate most about Coca-Cola, the group stated that people are attracted about its widely diversified product ranges starting from juices to carbonated drinks as well as the strong distribution channel that makes it possible to deliver the products even in very rural areas.

However, some arguments suggest that it spend comparatively a large part of the budget for advertisement and promotional actions that increases its operating expenses. On the other hand, it lacks sufficient strategies to address the fact that Saudi Arabia is a conformist nation in terms of religion, culture, and values and therefore, its advertising campaigns should correspond with this fact and not create any situation that is disheartening for the Saudi communities. It is arguable that in many cases Coca-Cola’s marketing activities created immense controversies in the country.

Alternative Solution as To How This Problem Can Be Alleviated

Considering the dilemmas that the Coca-Cola has been evidencing with the challenging issues in Saudi Arabia and rest of the globe, it is proper time to rethink the raised issue how to respond to them by standardizing marketing efforts across the host countries.

Sands (1) responded to this question with the single-minded views that there are states of affairs in which standardized marketing looms would deliver problem-solving approach with greater profit generation while the companies would drive with purely local approach. The localized multinational marketing strategy of Coca-Cola could successfully demonstrate that its marketing strategy is uniform through out the national boundaries but moderately diversified for the problematic regions of the excising markets

The Coca-Cola Company possible recognize the challenges and threat and would be able to identify the appropriate solution which would be applicable in the concerned market while it may simply distinguish the opportunities towards greater profitability within the standardized multinational strategy just like completely local approaches.

Coca-Cola has to pursue that for any case, while any opportunity or challenge would appear then the standardized multinational marketing strategy with completely local approach would be the right solution. It is also notable that in the concerned market, any alternative approach to overcome existing dilemmas would be localized, without local approach; none of the strategy would be successful and may connect with risk. With is logical ground the suggestive alternatives for Coca-Cola are as follows-

Alternative-1: Integrating National Identity:

In Saudi Arabia Coca-Cola face the dilemmas of boycotting American goods, to avoid anti-American moves Coca-Cola has the opportunity to integrating National identity that positively influence the buying behavior of Saudi people. In Saudi market Coca-Cola has been manufacturing under the banner of CCBCSA, which has registered in KSA, thus there is no problem to integrate national identity.

For instance, Coca-Cola can write in its Bottles “Made in Saudi Arabia – by the Arabs” and such statement could be used in the advertising that will ultimately motivate public perception in this region.

Alternative – 2: Removing linguistics dilemmas:

It has demonstrated in the case-2 of this research that the dilemmas were generated form linguistic problems from which the ‘Coca-Cola boycotting’ moves ere started. To overcome such further misunderstanding, Coca-Cola can translate its name into Arabic while there evidence that before entering China market, Coca-Cola has conducted billion dollar research to translate the brand name into Chinese. Moreover, Coca-Cola would be attentive to integrate Arabic in its promotional and advertising copies would be in local language.

Alternative – 3: Localizing Political Stands:

Coca-Cola is a multinational corporation – doing business and generating profit is its ultimate goal, it has no political agenda to establish rather than business. History tells that the company has alleged as an intellectual collaborator with notorious political affiliation staring from Hitler’s Nazi affiliation to supporting Israel.

Rather than any affiliation with anarchist political stand, Coca-Cola needed to stand beside the local people. During the US aggression in Iraq, if Coca-Cola appeal to the government to stop war against humanity- what was lose to the company but he gaining could be supposed to be positive perception from the local communities and never be boycotted.

How Each Alternative Can Be Implemented

USCIB (2) reported that in the leadership award, ceremony-2008 the president and CEO of Coca-Cola Muhtar Kent explored his anxiousness to the anti-globalization and anti-American moves and he suspect that if America does not shift its position, America would be isolated from the globe with its recessional economy.

He urged the government, business communities, and the civil society to working together to recover US democratic image rather than notorious warier and such a view would contribute to implementing the Alternative-3.

Alternative 1 and 2 could be implemented by following tools-

• Attitude of the Host Country : Being an MNC Coca-Cola needed to remove all difficult of its operation in the host country – Saudi Arabia by exactly accepting the approximately and non-confrontational behavior of the Arabs;
• Local Custom and Religion: It is the strapping challenge for the Coca-Cola to become conscious the core values of the local custom of Islam in Saudi Arabia including other existing multi cultural customs as well as ethnic groups and minorities live and work in KSA;
• Special Emphasis on Religious Issues: As the Muslims are zero tolerant regarding their religion issues and respond sensitively with bad temper, Coca-Cola needed to extremely conscious to deal with such issues in Saudi Arabia;
• Recruitment challenges: Coca-Cola must lead its recruitment policy in Saudi Arabia with ‘best talents with best pay’ aspect and during the selection of proper talents; the recruiters may face barely credible challenges to guarantee the effectual service for bet fit with the organizational objectives where religious orientation also an influential aspect here,
• Assessing Social Status : Coca-Cola needed to conduct particular market survey concerning Saudi Arabia’s social structure along with life style with the aim to addressing its social values, religious sentiment, as well as interaction;
• Cross-cultural Training : It is essential for the Coca-Cola to introduce a new fortune in its operation and to do so it will conduct well-organized Cross-Cultural Training aimed to motivating the spirit of the both management and employees in Saudi Arabia.

The future implication of alternatives or any other strategy would be thrown into dark prospect while the corporate crime of the Coco-Cola Company would be analyzed and people would lose their all faith and dependency on this MNC. Alsop (8) mentioned that the Coca-Cola plant in Columbia oppress its workers more brutally than slavery, the workers started movement substance wage and duration of work.

The management did not come into any negotiation but haired the corrupt paramilitary and they faired 129 union leaders at a time. In India Coca-Cola used extreme level of pesticide into the Coca-Cola Bottle, which has identified by the Indian government and banned its production for several months while the company also involved with conflict with the local farmers.

The colorful propaganda and advertising including the literature of its corporate social responsibility does not really indicate the actual core values of the company but humanities would identify it as a corporate terrorist Thus the future implication of alternatives very significant to the company for its long run sustainability and Coca-Cola surely lead to address the alternative implications.

Implications for Future Use

A number of strategic approaches exist that the company can implicate as future maneuver in order to exercise flourishing operational attributes in all parts of its business sphere in Saudi Arabia. Some such future implications include the following illustrations:

Figure 8: Future Implications for Coca-Cola Company

Source: Self generated

• Augmentation of Diminishing-Size of Carbonated-Soft-Drinks Market – Along with rising awareness amongst health conscious population of KSA, it is evidential that the market for such drinks are lowering by a certain rate; Coca-Cola will be augmenting the market size of this drink by emphasizing and investing more on its R&D to come up with something that is safe for health.
• Coping Up with Enhanced Competition from PepsiCo and Mecca Cola – In order to attain competitive advantages over the competitors of the Saudi Arabian market, the company will come up with pioneering policies that would be in accordance to an appropriate response to rivalry to achieve and maintain industry leadership.
• Reconciliation of Conflicting Issues with Bottlers – The Coca-Cola Company has a number of conflicting and unresolved issues with the bottlers in Saudi Arabia that pose a major hindrance for the business by increasing its operational expenditures. The company with very soon sit together with such bottlers and try to reconcile those conflicts by means of appropriate negotiations.
• Improvement of Technical Infrastructure – To ensure efficiency in manufacturing techniques of Saudi Arabia, the company will be seeking assistance from its machinery suppliers to provide it with the most up-to-date technical equipments that would be fast enough to cut down production time.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Recommendations.

• It 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
• There is enough evidence that the company has lost some plants and assets in foreign counties due to the US governmental policy, while US legislation or government policy creates global conflicting situation that hamper the company’s interest, it is ought for the company to protest such governmental initiatives.
• The high-level use of pesticides into the soft drinks in India has generated the public perception that the Coca-Cola Company may not bother for public health issues but to making profit with harmful product depending on colorful advertising is ultimate objective of the company. To the instance the Coca-Cola Company may needed to beg unconditional apology to the Indian people and compensate for public health injury. On the other hand, to improve product quality the company needed to conduct more research with appreciates guidance by the academia and health specialist and it would dement huge investment on research.
• Market can adversely affect for few reasons; therefore, Coca-Cola should monitor the increased competition in KSA, customers perception about the price of new items, down slopping trend in housing, upward interest rates, limited disposable earnings, lack of confidence of customers, reduced demand for the different beverages, ineffectively hedged costs of goods, like- high labor expenses, construction costs, IT and logistics costs;
• It should impose more control on the existing supply chain of Saudi Arabia since it is running on different risks, such as- disruption of its beverages to the third- party logistics and service distortion through general transportation within its own servicing channels;
• Since the customer choices are changing in Saudi Arabia, it should introduce new products considering the market demand of the population by launching delicious drinks with distinct flavors and tastes;
• 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.

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. Its 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.

In spite of all these praiseworthy features of the company, in some instances, this brand had to face public remonstrations for operational inappropriateness. This happened when the Arab world noticed a remorseful advertisement of the company engendering adverse situation 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.

Works Cited

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CCI. America, The World, and the New Challenges for Global Brands. 2004. Web.

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Favaro Ken, Tim Romberger, and David Meer. “Five Rules for Retailing in a Recession.” Harvard Business Review . 2009. Web.

Girard, Richard. Coca-Cola company: Inside the Real Thing. 2005. Web.

Godiwalla, Yezdi. “The MNCS Global Ethics and Social Responsibility: A Strategic Diversity Management Imperative.” Journal of Diversity Management 1.2 (2006) Web.

Indexmundi. Saudi Arabia Demographics Profile 2010 . 2010. Web.

Kotler, Philip, and Armstrong Gary. Principles of Marketing. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall, 2006. Print

MEPC. US Challenges and Choices Saudi Arabia : A View from the Inside . 2004. Web.

Rarick, Charles. MECCA-COLA: A Protest Brand Makes Its Mark . 2008. Web.

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Structural, Institutional, and Spatial Factors of Operation of Enterprises in Novosibirsk Oblast

• REGIONAL STUDIES
• Published: 07 April 2024
• Volume 14 , pages 86–90, ( 2024 )

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• E. A. Kolomak 1 , 2  

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The article examines the influence of structural, institutional, and spatial factors on business performance in Novosibirsk oblast, Russia, based on information about enterprises in the region for 2019–2020 available in the SPARK-Interfax database. An empirical analysis was carried out using regression models; an approach based on an extended production function was used, within which, along with assets and wages, the impact on the revenue and profit of enterprises for such factors as industry, age of company, form of ownership, and distance to regional capital was assessed. Assessments found higher productivity and profitability among private enterprises and young businesses, which argues for support of entrepreneurship and new firms in the region. Higher productivity and profitability of businesses in industry and services compared to agriculture indicate the advisability of assistance to the agricultural sector. The results of the analysis showed the significant contribution of agglomeration effects to the results of the operation of firms in Novosibirsk oblast, which is comparable to the average Russian estimates, and this speaks to the request for implementation of transport and infrastructure projects that reduce the costs of business interaction.

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The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (agreement no. 23-28-10007, https://rscf.ru/project/23-28-10007/ ) and the Government of Novosibirsk oblast (agreement no. 0000005406995998235120662/Nor-54).

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Kolomak, E.A. Structural, Institutional, and Spatial Factors of Operation of Enterprises in Novosibirsk Oblast. Reg. Res. Russ. 14 , 86–90 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079970523600397

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Received : 22 June 2023

Revised : 23 June 2023

Accepted : 19 October 2023

Published : 07 April 2024

Issue Date : March 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079970523600397

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