The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company

Coca-Cola is the number one captivator of people’s throats. The company, in the last one hundred years, has managed to transform people’s thirsts in to a need for Coca-Cola. The story of the Coca-Cola Company has humble beginnings. In 1885, John Pemberton, and Atlanta pharmacist, registered a trademark for “French wine cola-ideal nerve and tonic stimulant”, a brew he had developed in a three-legged pot he apparently stirred with an oar. His desire to create such a product was based upon a stomach injury and subsequent morphine addiction he acquired during the American Civil War. (Frederick p.31) His research led him to the Peruvian cola leaf whose healing effects included aiding digestion, aphrodisiacal powers, and life extending elements. He did not realize at the time that he invented the beverage that the cola leaf was as dangerous as morphine. (Frederick p.32) Nevertheless, the product was made available to the public, advertised as a means of alleviating both stomach and head aches. Pemberton did not have a very keen business sense, and so he hired Frank Robinson as the head marketer and manager of Coca-Cola. Robinson became the first in a long line of Coca-Cola men with a genius about the management of the product. By 1870, under the ownership of Asa Candler, the drink was the reason why people went to the soda fountain. (Frederick p.37) However, it was clear that the drink was still only appreciated within the southern United States. Coca-Cola’s problem with expansion at this time centered on two specific problems. Firstly, thousands of imitators made it impossible to distinguish the difference between the impostors and “the Real Thing”. However, after an extensive court battle the Company...

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...round the globe, throughout diverse and often bewildering emerging market economies, Coca-Cola has rapidly achieved market leadership. There is no question that Coca-Cola has succeeded in its goal to become a dominant global force, but at who’s expense? The company invades local cultures and takes advantage of the vulnerability of developing nations, allowing them to push their product upon the people of these countries. At the same time, they are moving to circumvent national governments to provide for favorable production and retail circumstances. The regulatory agencies of most of these governments are caving in to the “New World Order” of globalization, allowing corporations like Coca-Cola to assume an ever more stateless quality, leaving them less accountable to any government anywhere and more able to conduct business any way they feel necessary to succeed.