Companies Selected for Marketing Strategy Report

General Motors

General Motors, often known as simply GM, is a U.S. automaker founded by William C. Durant in Flint, Michigan, now based in Detroit, Michigan, and is the world's second-largest automaker, as ranked by global unit sales for 2008.

GM previously led in global sales for 77 consecutive years (1931 to 2007), longer than any other automaker. It manufactures cars and trucks in 34 countries. GM employs 244,500 people around the world, and sold and serviced vehicles in some 140 countries.

Though the carmaker started with Buick, within the year Mr Durant had put Cadillac, Pontiac precursor Oakland Motor Company and the Oldsmobile all under its umbrella. The company set about a rapid expansion, setting up foreign operations to sell its cars abroad and, critically, acquiring stakes in Germany's Opel and the UK's Vauxhall during the 1920s.

The company joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1925, where it has been ever since. Mr. Durant also set up what was to become another iconic US brand, Chevrolet.

It had made its 100 millionth car in the US by 1967, and opened a flagship 50-storey building in New York the following year.

Founded when the US still had fewer than 10,000 cars in total, the carmaker was once the symbol of American prestige and its brands respected all over the world.

But trouble was brewing for GM.

In the 1970s, the oil crisis gave the first sign that the US car industry might be vulnerable to an invasion from smaller and more efficiently produced Japanese cars. GM's attempts to change its own production process ran into trouble with its workforce, leading to a downward spiral in industrial relations.

In 1999, GM acquired the gigantic Hummer brand but its downfall has been brutal. When drivers started to switch to smaller, more fuel efficient cars, GM and the other US carmakers were slow to follow suit.

Heavy discounting aimed at maintaining the American public as customers led to sharp cuts in profits, which eventually losses. The company was last profitable in 2004.

GM, in 2008, sold 8.35 million cars and trucks globally, under thirteen brand names. However, GM ran into financial problems in 2008, reporting a $6 billion loss in the first-quarter of 2009 and a loss of $52.8 billion since the same period in 2008.

On 1 June 2009, GM filed for bankruptcy protection, saying it would be forced to liquidate if the plan was not approved.

Coca Cola

The first Coca-Cola recipe was invented in a drugstore in Columbus, Georgia by John Pemberton, originally as a cocawine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca in 1885. He may have been inspired by the formidable success of Vin Mariani, a European cocawine.

In 1886, when Atlanta and Fulton County passed prohibition legislation, Pemberton responded by developing Coca-Cola, essentially a non-alcoholic version of French Wine Cola.The first sales were at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886.It was initially sold as a patent medicine for five cents a glass at soda fountains, which were popular in the United States at the time due to the belief that carbonated water was good for the health. Pemberton claimed Coca-Cola cured many diseases, including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. Pemberton ran the first advertisement for the beverage on May 29 of the same year in the Atlanta Journal.

The present company was incorporated in September 1919 under the laws of the State of Delaware and succeeded to the business of a Georgia corporation with the same name that had been organized in 1892.

Now The Coca-Cola Company is the largest manufacturer, distributor and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups in the world. Finished beverage products bearing Coca-Cola trademarks are , sold in the United States since 1886, are now sold in more than 200 countries. Along with Coca-Cola, which is recognized as the world's most valuable brand, it also markets four of the world's top five nonalcoholic sparkling brands, including Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite.

The company currently operates in following “Operation groups” :-

Eurasia and Africa
Europe
Latin America
North America
Pacific
Bottling Investments
Corporate

Justification for Company Choices

The companies, General Motors and Coca Cola have been chosen on account of their level of comparability they bring on the table and the contrasting fate that they have undergone after a history of successful operations.

There are similarities in the businesses as they both are essentially manufacturing. Both the business have started at approximately the same point in time and have come a long way (both more that 100 years old now) and have seen sufficient ups and downs and this makes them apt material to be analyzed at length.

Another similarity is that they have both been attributed as mainstay of US economy. Each has been an iconic “Brand” in its area of work.

On the other hand there are vast differences in the markets they operate in, GM with its automobile operates at much higher costs and margins per piece compared to coke. Coke being a convenience product relies on volumes, availability and reach to the market as compared to GM. This difference of being a Specialty Good (GM products) Vs Convenience Goods (Coke Products) is the basis for variations in the marketing approaches followed.

There are also major differences in the levels of working capital, capital realization timelines and turnaround time at internal company level which contribute to various marketing promotions and strategies.

Another major difference is the level of competition and the number of competitors faced by both the companies. Where Coca-Cola operates with few major competitors (primarily oligopolistic markets), General Motors had too many of them to handle.

Despite being iconic brands spanning multiple nations, with both had sufficient size, financial muscle, tested business models and the brand created through years of expertise and competence development that led to market supremacy over long periods of time there marketing strategies differed substantially and thus one suffers the brunt of bankruptcy while other continues to flourish.

This is a classic case that could analyze the marketing and strategic policies followed by both the organization under similar environmental conditions and the potency of their responses to the same.

Model Based Evaluation

Theoretical Model that would be used for the evaluation would be :-

Porter's Five Forces Model (For External Factor Analysis)
Porter's Value Chain Analysis (For Internal Factor Analysis)
Perceptual Mapping and Gap Analysis Model
Any other additional model that is deemed suitable for analysis

Marketing Strategy Report would engulf an analysis of the existing environment (both internal to the firm and external to it), the competitive landscape. This knowledge would then be used as the factors for evaluation purposes.

Only in wake of company's responses to these factors would the evaluation and reporting be carried out.