How Coca Cola uses customer data to sell more
Published by: Pritee Verma
Coca Cola is one of the iconic companies that has been around for over a century. Customer behaviour analysis is at its heart of operation and it leaves no stones unturned to analyse customer information and take corresponding actions.
According to Coca Cola , customer analytics gives them important insights into who is drinking their drinks, where those people are located, and what prompts them to mention the brand online. They use this information to serve consumers more targeted adverts, which, according to Coca-Cola, are four times more likely to result in a click.
Product Development
Moreover, customer analytics has paid off Coca Cola in a number of areas, including product development. In 2017, it was revealed that the launch of new flavour Cherry Sprite was inspired by data collected from those self-service drinks fountains that let customers mix their own drinks.
Fruits of this research were unveiled when it was announced that the decision to launch Cherry Sprite as a new flavour was based on monitoring data collected from the latest generation of self-service soft drinks fountains, which allow customers to mix their own drinks.
Further, as sales of sugary, fizzy drink products have declined in recent years Coca Cola leveraged data to help produce and market some of its healthier options, such as orange juice, which the company sells under a number of brands around the world (including Minute Maid and Simply Orange).
Brand Value
Social media analytics is another important avenue that Coca-Cola fully exploits – and it’s no wonder with 35 million Twitter followers and a whopping 105 million Facebook fans. With those kinds of numbers, the company is sitting on a rich vein of valuable data. It uses this data to track how Coca-Cola products are represented across the various social media platforms. In 2015, this led to the calculation that the company’s products were mentioned somewhere in the world, on average, every two seconds. Information gathered from social media helps take quick actions in near real time. Sometimes one single tweet goes viral and creates big losses. Having a near real time and holistic view helps take proactive and corrective measure immediately. Such efforts help build brand value and presence.
Informed business operation decisions
The company combines weather data, satellite images, information on crop yields, pricing factors and acidity and sweetness ratings, to ensure that orange crops are grown in an optimum way, and maintain a consistent taste. It uses data analytics on top of the collected information to match products to local consumer tastes in the 200-plus countries around the world where its products are sold.