The brand value of brand equity of Coca-Cola is projected at $89.

9 billion in the year 2019,

which is 4 times more than the closest soft drink brand on the list.

What increases Coca Cola’s Brand Equity?

The core ingredients for Coca Cola making are eminent within the industry. However, it is not
possible to replicate Coca-Cola at home whereas, can duplicate pretty close. If competitors try
to produce a batch of Cola by using the recipe, yet it might not the same as the original Coca-
Cola. The duplicate product might taste the same but yet it could not be same.
1. Secret Formula
The secret formula of Coca-Cola increases the brand equity as it offers the significant
difference between other soft drinks, especially Colas.
2. Long Association
On the other hand, another value that adds up to Coca Cola’s brand equity is in its long-term
association with its customers. Marketers of Coca-Cola constantly focus on relationship
building with its customers, through targeting family bonding and emotions in its
advertisement.

Market Shift and Coca Cola’s Brand Equity

Since, the customers become more health conscious, and become careful in selecting products.
Several allegations were put on Coca-Cola brand regarding use of unhealthy ingredients in
making Coca-Cola.
1. Unhealthy Ingredients
Recently, there was hype in media about use of sugar in Coca-Cola, and Coke Zero/ Diet Coke
were criticized for the anti-chemical agenda. The company strived to overcome this gap by
introducing a new brand with the name of Coke Life. This new brand has two-thirds of the
natural sweeteners and calories that aimed to target health-conscious customer base.
2. How Coca-Cola retains its Brand Equity
At this point of time, Coca-Cola is not a struggling brand yet appeared to decline slowly.
However, Coca-Cola strives to retain its brand equity; on the other hand, shifting their products
and image away from sugary carbonated beverage and towards a contemporary image that
strives to link with present and future demands of marketing-saturated and information-rich
customers.

How Coca-Cola Build its Brand Equity?

Coca-Cola signifies consistency in communication, along with quality relationships to build its
brand equity. Coca-Cola is a brand that customers’ love and know, as the company pays billions
of dollars to create a strong brand image in the mind of customers. It begins with a compelling
image, a unique style and thrilling message to increase brand equity.
The company apparently has uniqueness. Customers are ready to pay money and just want
Coca Cola because the brand associated with customer emotions, such as family, behaviors,
feelings, fulfillment, and memories of fun and good times. This approach of creating
association with customers helped Coca-Cola in increasing brand equity; as a result, Coca-Cola
has a huge base of loyal customers.
Brand equity models are
Aaker model
Bav model
Brandz model

Aaker model: the Aaker model, created by David A. Aaker, a marketing professor at the
Univercity of California-Berkeley and a management consultant at Prophet, is a marketing
model which view brand equity as a combination of brand awareness, brand loyalty and brand
association, which add up to give the value provided by a product or service.
Aaker defines the brand equity as the set of brand assets and liabities linked to the brand , its
name and symbols that add value to, or substract value from a product or service.

BRAND EQUITY= BRAND AWARENESS + BRAND LOYALTY + BRAND

ASSOCIATION + PERCIEVED QUALITY +OTHER PROPERTARY ASSETS
Brand loyalty the extent to which people all to a brand is express in the following factors
1. Reducing marketing cost: hanging on to loyal customer is cheaper than charming
potential new customer
2. Trend leverage: loyal customers represent a stable source of revenue for the distributive
trade
3. Attracting new customers: current customer can help boost name awareness and hence
bring new customer
4. Time to respond to competitive threats: loyal customers that are not quick to switch
brands give a company more time to respond to competitive threats

Brand awareness the extent to which a brand is known about the public which can be measured
using the following parameters
1. Anchor to which association can be attached: depending on strength of brand name for
fever associations can be attached to it which will intern eventually influence the brand
awareness
2. Brand awareness the extent to which a brand is known about the public which can be
measured using the following parameters
3. Familiarity reality and liking consumers with positive attitude towards your brand will
talk about it more and spread brand awareness
4. Commitment to a brand
5. Brand to be considered during purchasing process: to what extent does the brand form
part of evoked set of brands in a consumer's mind
Perceived quality: the extent to which brand is considered to provide good quality products can
be measured on basis of following five criteria
1. The quality of offered by a product/brand is a reason to buy It
2. Level of differentiation/positions in relation to competing brand
3. Price: as the product we convert complex to assess the and status is play consumers
trained to take price as a quality indicator
4. Availability in different sales channel: consumer have a high quality perception of
brands that are widely available
5. The number of line /brand extension: this can tell the consumer the brand stands for a
certain quality guarantee this is applicable on a wide scale
Brand association association triggered by a brand can be assessed on the basis of five
following indicators
1. The extent to which a brand name is able to review associate from customers green
such information from TV advertising
2. The extent to which association contribute to brand differentiation in relation to
competition: these can be abstract association, such as vitality or associations with
concrete product benefits, such "will leave your watching cleaner”
3. The extent to which brand association plays a role in the buying process the greater is
extent the higher the total brand equity
4. The extent to which brand association creates positive attitude feeling the great assistant
the higher the total brand equity
5. The number of brand extension in market the greater the number of the greater the
opportunity to add brand association

BAV Model

Brand Asset Valuator Model: In the BAV Power Grid, CocaCola will be placed among the
companies which are leaders with high earnings or high potential. We may look at the position
of CocaCola in the market with respect to the following parameters: - Differentiation: This
measures the strength of the brand’s meaning. CocaCola, to maintain the differentiated product
that it aims to achieve invests 20% of its advertising budget on its differentiating strategy. It
has also positioned itself in the market in the following ways:
Corporate reputation for quality and innovation
Successful communication of perceived strengths of the product. · Symbol of fun and enjoy.
In differentiation, we can look at the strategy of CocaCola against its chief rivals PepsiCo.
While CocaCola has maintained its focus on the non-alcoholic beverage segment, Pepsico has
expanded their focus to snacks also. Hence, CocaCola globally still appeals to the same
consumer segment while PepsiCo now has to balance between the two and also in the process,
PepsiCo might lose its place in the consumer’s mind as a chiefly beverage oriented brand.
This is how CocaCola has differentiated itself from PepsiCo by not venturing into snacks. A
product of the CocaCola company that helps it differentiate from other players in the non-
alcoholic beverage segment is Limca. The lemon flavoured drink has a considerable loyal
consumer base which was proved when PepsiCo launched the Mirinda Lemon flavour but was
phased out almost instantaneously due to below average sales. In recent times though, the
strategy of the company has not been performing very well.

There have been drops in market share lately and thus they need to create stronger
advertisements that will once again provide a sturdy customer base. So basically, in order to
maintain its position as the market leader, Coke should concentrate its efforts more on its
differentiation strategy. Energy: This measures the brand’s sense of momentum. It may be
looked upon as the product of its customer base and the number of purchases or more
appropriately repurchases per customer. Momentum maybe looked upon as a combination of
leadership, consumer demand, high visibility and engaging with the consumer.
CocaCola is profitably placed in most of these facets. Being the market leader and growing at
a reasonable rate for the past few years, CocaCola has a whole range of products which is
aimed at increasing consumer demand. The advertising campaigns ensure that the visibility for
CocaCola always remain at a high level and all of these together make sure that the energy of
brand CocaCola does not fall. Relevance : Relevance measures the personal appropriateness of
a brand to consumers and is strongly tied to household penetration.
It can be said that relevance is the measure of the breadth of the appeal of a brand. The main
challenge for brands is staying both relevant and differentiated. CocaCola has always been a
‘top of the mind’ brand and recently through its advertising campaigns has started saying
“Spread Happiness” and propagating CocaCola as a symbol of happiness throughout the world.
This way it aims to connect to the mind of the customer automatically every time he has an
occasion or any reason to celebrate. CocaCola, historically have always made breakthroughs
in new marketing spaces before any of its competitors.

Thus they have enjoyed the early mover advantage and hence managed to establish a personal
connect with people before rival brands such a Pepsico have made inroads. Even today,
CocaCola has decided to invest in India and China mainly for the next five years as they see
great potential for growth here. The efforts put in to be relevant is not always limited just to
consumers. CocaCola was the first company to introduce the innovative “Own Your Fridge”
programme for retailers whereby retailers could find a solution to their cooling needs. In his
way CocaCola has managed to stand out in rural and urban markets with a very strong
distribution channel. Differentiation ,Relevance and Energy together constitute the Energized
Brand Strength of CocaCola and from the studies we can say that it is pretty strong in this
segment and maybe it has reached its peak since it is very difficult for a brand of CocaCola’s
stature to increase on its existing market size. The demand maybe increased but that too not
very significantly. Esteem : Esteem as the name suggests is the measure of how well the brand
is respected and regarded.
Given the history of CocaCola and its recent performance in the market, it has re-established
itself as one of the more trusted brands globally. It recorded profits across all international
markets and did very well in emerging markets. CocaCola enjoys the position of the leading
player in the Indian beverage market where it has 60% share in the carbonated soft drinks
segment, 36% share in fruit drinks segment and 33% share in the packaged water segment.
Thus it is widely regarded and respected as one of the better brands that have maintained their
stature over a substantial period of time.

Knowledge : Knowledge tells us about how familiar and intimate consumers are with the brand.
In India CocaCola is one of the most recognised and loved brands. CocaCola’s advertising
campaigns over the years have continued to make a mark on the Indian consumers and the
celebrities that they have roped in to endorse CocaCola have also been successful and left a
mark. The strong supply chain has ensured that CocaCola has reached the masses at every level
and strong connections with retailers has also helped in strengthening that connect. Esteem and
Knowledge together create the Brand Stature.

Coca-Cola is probably one of the world’s best when it comes to this category. With a high level
of esteem and extremely high familiarity and availability, Coca-Cola enjoys the trust of
millions worldwide. Thus, through the Brand Asset Valuator Model we have been able to
assess the performance of Coca-Cola as a brand and we can conclude that it has been doing
very well as the market leader in the non-alcoholic beverage segment but lately it has seen
profits go down which can be traced back to its lack of proper differentiation. Other than that,
the brand is alive and kicking and a bit of work on certain facets will see it soar even higher.

Keller’s Brand Equity Model

Brand awareness also involves linking the brand—brand name, logo, symbol, and so forth—
to certain associations in memory. In particular, building brand awareness involves making
sure that customers understand the product or service category in which the brand
competes. There must be clear links to other products or services sold under the brand name.
Salience provides three important functions:

First, salience influences the formation and strength of brand associations that make up the
brand image and gives the brand meaning.

Second, creating a high level of brand salience in terms of category identification influences
the likelihood that the brand will be in consideration to buy or not seriously. Brand salience is
also important during possible consumption settings in terms of maximizing potential usage.

Third, when customers have “low involvement” with a product category, they may make
choices based on brand salience alone.

Brand awareness can be distinguished in terms of two key dimensions—depth and breadth.
Depth of brand awareness refers to how easily customers can recall or recognize the brand.
Breadth of brand awareness refers to the range of purchase and consumption situations in which
the brand comes to mind.
With many brands, the key question is not whether customers can recall the brand, but rather,
where do they think of the brand, when do they think of the brand, and how easily and often
do they think of the brand? Many brands and products are ignored or forgotten in possible
usage situations.

In the case of Coca Cola, in every campaign, they have tried to prove to the world their brand
salience with the specialty of red colour – the colour of energy, youthful, excitement, and in a
wide scale of approaches. When it comes to a campaign, they use a set of advertising network,
mass media, Internet, even distribution channels to dominate customer’s brain with Red colour
and a powerful message. Gradually, people get used to it.

Resonance:
Consumer,
Involvement,
Community
Attachment
Judgment: Feelings: happiness,
Innovative, Shearing, Celebration,
Loyalty, Leader, Unity, Family and
Superiority friends, Self-respect

Performance: Refreshment, Imagery: Happiness,

Unique Flavour, Reference of Moments, Christmas,
Cola, Energy, Taste Social, Fun

Salience: Love mark, Everywhere, American Values,

Fresh drink, Sharing happiness, Community
 What about you
and me?
Resonance

Brand Response
What about you?

Judgment Feelings
Brand Meaning
What are you?
Performance Imagery

Brand Identity Who are you?