可口可乐在中国 something special in China

Coca-Cola localization strategy in China —Think Local, Act LocalTable of Contents1. Introduction (3)2. L ocalization strategy (3)2.1 The definition of localization strategy (3)2.2 The necessity of localization strategy (3)3. Coca-Cola’s development in China (3)4. Coca-Cola’s localization strategy in China (3)4.1 Brand naming localization (3)4.2 Product localization (4)4.3 Advertising localization (5)4.3.1 Categories of localized advertising (5)4.3.1.1 Television advertisement (5)4.3.1.2 Advertisement synchronized with major events the Chinese people highly concerned abou t (5)4.3.1.3 Spring Festival ads (6)4.3.2 Features of localized advertising (6)4.3.2.1 Combination of advertising and Chinese culture (6)4.3.2.2 Choose Chinese new generation idol to do image speakers (6)4.4 Packaging localization (7)1. IntroductionCoca Cola, as the largest beverage company in the world, has a long history of more than 110 years. Coca Cola Co in China firstly has got a great success in Chinese marketing. However, without any mature marketing strategies, Coca Cola Co in China can not have such a great achievement. And the basis of all marketing strategies is localization, which is the most important element that Coca Cola has been the most popular beverage in China.2. Localization strategy2.1 The definition of localization strategyThe localization strategy refers to some multinational corporations, in order to maximize the marketing interests in sales country or region, fully satisfy the demand of target market, adapt to the local culture and use the local management personnel and business organization of production to implement a series of production, management and marketing decisions.2.2 The necessity of localization strategyWith the development of economic globalization, the increasingly fierce competition among multinational corporations makes them compete not only with local companies to seize market share, but also with other countries in local country's market to win the competitive market. From the view of marketing segmentation and personal marketing strategy, the enterprises have to study the local culture and society as well as develop products for local marketing, thus they can cater for the different demands of products for different societies and cultures.3. Coca-Cola’s development in ChinaAt the beginning of 1927, Coca-Cola had invested in China. In 1948, Shanghai had become the first market outside of the US whose annual sales achieved more than 1,000,000 boxes of Coca-Cola. In 1979, the first year of China’s Reform and Opening Up, Coca-Cola became the first international brand that returned to the Chinese mainland. In 1999, a Gallup survey showed that 81% of the Chinese consumers could recognize the Coca-Cola brand. In 2003, an independent Chinese authoritative consumption survey showed, Coca-Cola had been the most popular beverage in China for eight years. Now, Coca Cola Co’s investment in China exceeds $1,200,000,000, in Chinese mainland it has built 28 bottling companies and 34 factories and has more than 20,000 employees.4. Coca-Cola’s localization strategy in China4.1 Brand naming localizationA good brand name can help a product win a universal praise. Coca-Cola’s Chinese brand name emerged victorious in various global markets. Because of thistranslated name “Ke Kou Ke Le”which was accepted by Chinese consumers, Coca-Cola got a great success in Chinese marketing.A brand name which can be suitable for reading aloud is the sound part of the brand; it is also the key element of the brand, the most distinctive feature of the brand and the basic form of brand culture concept. A good brand name itself is one of the simplest and the most direct advertising language. It can quickly and effectively expresses the central contents of this company. From this view, “Ke Kou Ke Le” is a good example.“Coca” and “Cola” stands for two primary ingredients in English. Chinese name of Coca-Cola doesn’t have this relationship, however, “Ke Kou Ke Le”became another creation. “Ke Kou”, an adjective in Chinese, often used to describe delicious food, so “Ke Kou” will make consumers naturally feel the product is flavorful. “Ke Le” is completely an innovative idea which didn’t been used in China before until the translator put it up. As soon as Chinese people refer to “Le”, it will be associated with “Kuai Le”—means “happy” in Chinese. So, “Ke Le” can make people easily expect happy things. That’s why “Ke Kou Ke Le” accepted by Chinese people immediately. In others words, this localized brand name fits the cultural psychology of ordinary Chinese people.Compared with some Chinese companies whose brand names are from foreign language, Coca-cola’s Chinese name is more easily to be remembered by consumers. We can see that brand naming localization is a great tool for multinational corporations to promote its brand. Local name can eliminate the consumer's psychological line of defense and get the psychological sense of identity. Some international brands can quickly become popular in the Chinese market, and it is inseparably related to Chinese local name.4.2 Product localizationCoca Cola Co had hoped its flagship brand Coca-Cola could achieve globalization, but people's preferences are not the same in the diversity of the world. They found that the consumption of carbonated drinks for one people was less than 100 cans every year in Asia, while the Americans could drink 395 cans per year. People in Asia, especially in China, are more likely to drink fruit juice and traditional tea. So, Coca Cola Co finally changed the style "Give the world a can of Coca-Cola" and began to tailor its products to people in China.According to the characteristics of the Chinese market, Coca Cola Co expanded its variety of drinks from Oolong Tea, mixed fruit drink, new era of high heat energy drink, to the most original drink—water. Coca Cola Co respectively produced “Chivalry” (Xue Fei Li) in 1989, “Jin Mei Le” in 1990, “Smart” (Xingmu) in 1996 and “Tian Yu Di” in 1997 with the help of Chinese local enterprises. Learning from the National Light Industry Bureau Chinese Light Industry Expo, the four series of beverages have made a great progress. More importantly, the sales growth of “Tian Yu Di” an d “Smart” had been more 10 times than before, and these two types of drink have become the fastest growing beverages. Here are two examples of Coca-Cola’s localized products in Chinese market.In 1997, Coca-Cola's fruit flavored carbonated beverage brand “Smart” c ame out. In 2000, its marketing share reached 4.6% and the brand awareness reached 16.2%. “Smart” is the first step to produce localized products of Coca Cola Co in China. It is the implementation model of Coca-Cola Co localization strategy.Another example of localized product in China is tea drinks. Since 1998 “Tian Yu Di”was successfully promoted to Chinese market, Coca-Cola continuously developed new tea drinks, such as Nestea Ice Tea, "Lan Feng" Honey Green Tea, "Cha Yan Gong Fang"(Tea Research Workshop) and Health Works. All these tea drinks are accordance with Chinese tastes and Chinese traditional custom in drinking to be produced. And it truly pushed Coca-cola’s development in China market.Just like Du Dafu, the chairman of Coca Cola Co in China, said that “Only the localized beverage could be able to be the best seller”, indeed, Coca-cola accomplished this goal through their practical actions.4.3 Advertising localizationSandy, President of Coca-Cola Asia District, said, "The direct result of the localization is that Coca-Cola become ever closer to consumers". This point is best performed in advertising4.3.1 Categories of localized advertising4.3.1.1 Television advertisementIn 1999, Coca-Cola successfully launched a television advertisement which had a theme of "young". The advertisement changed the usual American faces and was set in a new local image to show Coca-Cola’s present state of young and health. The whole advertisement was completely in a Chinese traditional scene, and the Chinese faces and energetic music made the distance between Coca-Cola and Chinese young people become closer. This advertisement can be said to be a stepping-stone to success in television advertisement. After getting a lot of praise in the ads, Coca-Cola began to extensively absorb more Chinese local factors in advertisement.At the end of 2000, Coca Cola Co launched the "skateboard under the moonlight”with the group of "Xie Tingfeng, Lin Xinru, Zhang Zhenyue". The ads showed that young people in China were eager to communicate and advocated to be brave. Another typical advertising where Zhang Bozhi dated with a young boy reflected that Chinese young people were paying more attention to romantic love. Coca-Cola’s ads included these themes that Chinese young people were interested in also make it more easily to promote their products to young people.In this part, Coca-Cola successfully captured the hearts of Chinese young people.4.3.1.2 Advertisement synchronized with major events the Chinese people highly concerned abou tIn the time of some events occurred like China applied for being the host country of the Olympics and Chinese National Football struggled to get into the World Cup,Coca Cola Co produced ads which were concerned about these events to show that Coca-Cola would support China with Chinese people together.In many brand operations, Coca-Cola’s sponsorship for Olympic is undoubtedly the most attractive and the most successful for many years, which made the human sports events more splendor, and also made Coca-Cola’s brand gained more reputation in China. As for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, Coca-Cola seized every opportunity to promote through this great platform. That’s why there’s a joke that the Beijing Olympic Games just likes "Coca-Cola Olympic Games"—the world is a sea of red.Coca-Cola through these promotions to the events Chinese concerned about again and again made the distance between Coca-Cola and Chinese consumers closer.4.3.1.3 Spring Festival adsFrom the beginning of 1999, Coca Cola Co will launch a series New Year’s advertising to celebrate New Year during the Spring Festival every year. “Windmill”in 1999 and “Dragon Dance” in 2000 left a deep impression on consumers. In 2001, following the "Windmill", "Dragon Dance" advertising for China market to celebrate the New Year, Coca-cola introduced the advertising "Clay Doll A Fu" which deeply showed Chinese cultural features. This advertising sent the information that Coca-Cola celebrated Spring Festival with Chinese people together through showing the actions about the little brother and sister pasting spring couplets and having fireworks.In these ads, Coca-Cola used Chinese traditional scenes, Chinese traditional characters as well as Chinese traditional dresses. All of these Chinese factors fully expressed the Spring Festival’s theme. It was a great success in catering for Chinese consumers.4.3.2 Features of localized advertising4.3.2.1 Combination of advertising and Chinese culture.Chinese people like lively atmosphere, especially the Spring Festival for the family reunion. Coca-Cola selected typical Chinese situations, using some Chinese tradition arts like couplets, puppets and paper cutting, through several folk activities during the Spring Festival like pasting couplets, having fireworks and so on, to show Chinese strong local flavor.Besides, Coca-Cola made its products closely link with some major events that Chinese people highly concerned about, like China’s joining into WTO and Beijing Olympic Games. One of the impressive advertisements is that “Drink Coca-Cola, share the excitement of the World Cup" to sponsor Chinese football team. These actions which showed Coca-Cola will always be together with Chinese made Chinese people have a sense of national pride.We can see that Coca-Cola has become the Chinese local product, and this local image truly strengthen the communication with Chinese consumers.4.3.2.2 Choose Chinese new generation idol to do image speakersCoca-Cola advertising focused on the young people, so the advertisement picture always showed the energetic, young and healthy image to the audience. At first, in 1999, the first image speaker that Coca-Cola selected was Zhang Huimei, a vigorous and wild singer, won a large number of young people’s admiration. And then the appearances of Xie Tingfeng and Zhang Bozhi (both of them were very popular among young people) also pushed the development of Coke’s advertising. After that, Fu Mingxia, the Olympic champion and Diving Queen in China, signed with Coca-Cola, becoming the first advertising spokesman of new century "Sprite" brand in China. Another successful adverting is the series of advertisements by Liu Xiang, who won champion in the 110 meters hurdle race in the 2004 Olympic Games. And then, the participations of famous sports stars like Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian also made Coca-Cola become the most popular beverage in China. And some advertising languages occurred in these advertisements, such as “Where are we going? The Olympic Games”, “You can’t beat the feeling”and “Coca-cola enjoy”, left deep impressions to the audience.It was said that Coca-Cola sales in the China market grew by 24% after using Chinese new generation idols. So these image speakers for Coca-cola successfully helped to promote its products to everyone in China.4.4 Packaging localizationExcept for the brand name, products, and advertising of the localization, Coca Cola Co also pay attention to make a fuss in the packaging.During the period of the most traditional festival—Spring Festival, according to local tradition, Coca-coal launched "A Fu" and "A Jiao" images, which let Chinese consumers feel very warm and approachable. In addition, the usage of the Chinese traditional 12 zodiac on packaging catered for the China traditional culture in celebration of the New Year. Subsequently, Chinese various packaging including the pot of gold version, China team football version and the paper-cut version made the distance between Coca-Cola and Chinese consumers become closer. According to the customs in some celebrated occasions like parties on weekday, common celebrations and other special occasions, Coco-Cola specifically introduced large bottle packaging. This packaging strategy caters for Chinese favor that they like to joy together and share the large bottle. It can fully meet the Chinese market demands. At the same time, Coca-cola also introduced the glass bottles, plastic bottles and other different materials or different capacity of packaging to meet the demands of people in different occasions.Besides, during the time of 2001 Olympic bid, Coca-Cola timely launched an “Olympic gold bottle” to celebrate the Chinese's successful Olympic bid with Chinese consumers. In 2002, the Chinese National Football struggled to attack the World Cup. At that time, Coca Cola Co seized the opportunity to introduce the two packages with the theme of the World Cup. One is painted with the World Cup mascot images, while another has drawn running Chinese football players. We can believe that few people have not seen the Olympic Games, also believe that few people did not drink Coca-Cola. Coca- Cola and the Olympic games have been not separated in people’seyes. Coca-Cola launched eight limited editions of aluminum cans packaging during Beijing Olympic Games. These eight kinds of packaging were used in different Chinese painting, with the CD where the theme music "Coke Side of Life" is composed by American classical musicians in New YorkIn 2013 May, Coca Cola has launched 24 kinds of the new nickname bottles including food aficionado (Chi Huo), pure menfolk(Chun Ye Men), meow star people(Miao Xing Ren), big shot(Da Ka), Tian Ran Dai, little lolita(Xiao Luo Li) and so on. The new packaging of Coca Cola on the "nickname" is very popular. Chinese young people are very familiar with theses words, and it made the distance between Coca-cola and consumers closer again. Some people said, "Coca Cola's new clothes to sell a good hand of adorable, I want to have a full set.”Coca-Cola has attracted Chinese people successfully through these localized packages, and it is indispensable for Coca-Cola’s successful promotion in China.。