International Business: Impact of Globalization on Business

Introduction

The world has globalized as a fast pace courtesy of the advancement in technology. The effects of these developments have not left the world of business untouched (Kavoossi, 2000). In this paper we shall be exploring the effects of globalization on Coca Cola products and how it has affected its accounting systems and marketing strategy. Secondly, we shall be looking at the Abu Dhabi National Hotels Company, which is one of the major service providers in the tourism sector in the United Arabs Emirates. We shall be studying the effects of globalization on its operations and especially its marketing strategy.

Coca Cola Company

The Coca Cola Company is a multinational that sells soda fountain beverages. The company has been around as one of the top producers of soft drinks in the world. The company averagely produces 1.3 billion servings of the drink on a daily basis. It has developed to become on of the only soft drink multinational that has got the top ranking universal system of distribution. It has therefore been credited as the most proficient company in the production, distribution and marketing if soft drinks.

Functional Performance: The Accounting System of the Coca Cola Company

There are three major types of bottling operations at the Coca Cola Inc. For one there are the bottlers in whose the company has got no ownership interests. Secondly, there are the bottlers that the company has some controlling ownership interests and the third kind of bottlers are those in whose the company has got non-controlling ownership interests. 

These bottling partners are authorized to conduct the manufacturing and packaging of the product. By granting the bottlers, the mandate to manufacture helps the company to acquire controlling interests in the operations of bottling. The owning of the controlling interests in turn help the company compensate for the local resources; it also helps the company to improve their information system .

This has necessitated the development of intranet as the accounting system of the company. As part of the knowledge management system the intranet guides the transmission of the information system that is needed for accounting. 

One advantage of this internets system is that it helps to boost the relationship of the bottlers as it links them together. Secondly, the knowledge management acquires its data from the bottlers, who are directly linked to the customers at the community level. Therefore the intranet links them into a team with the company.

Business Performance: Coca Cola Marketing Strategy

Product: As aforementioned, Coca Cola is a soft drink that is not only widely known but also used around the world. There is a great variety of soft drinks that are offered by the Coca Cola Company. They include Rc Cola, Minute, Sprite, Stony, and Diet Coke (Morris, Honeycutt, & Pitt, 2001). 

Promotion:   The Coca Cola brand has been adopted into being the strategy for global marketing. The company considers the whole world as a single market place and therefore a uniform marketing strategy has been employed to promote the soft drink products for many years. However, the trend is currently experiencing changes as changes as there are different marketing strategies being used, which cater for the needs of the different countries around the globe. Through advertising the demand for Coca Cola has been created the world over. It is worth noting that Coca Cola advertising strategy has endeavored to adjust the mix the geographical, cultural and economic aspects of the locality in which it is promoted (Perry & Maurer, 2003).

Place: The Coca Cola Company boasts of a very efficient system of distribution across the globe. Due to the company’s efficient research on the market, their products have been able to be produced globally in different regions. As a result, the Coca Cola Company has developed an intensive bottler’s system and distribution network that has made it able for its products to be availed anywhere in the world, in every retail outlets. One of the motivations for selling the soft drink worldwide includes the fact that Coca Cola is a product that can be used with everyone regardless of their gender, age and status.

Abu Dhabi National Hotels

In this paper, we are going to review the performance of the Abu Dhabi National Hotels, which is multinational firm situated within the United Arabs Emirates. According to (Derudder et al., 2012), the Abu National Hotels is a group of hotel, tourism and transport and catering chain, which is partly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. Whereas the majority of property that is owned by the Abu Dhabi National Hotels is located in Abu Dhabi, the company has seen to massive expansion within the United Arabs Emirates. By 2012 the company had owned about 15 properties in the form of hotel and hotel apartments within Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Fujairah and Al Ain (Derudder et al., 2012).

The Impact of Globalization on the Abu Dhabi National Hotels’ Marketing Strategy

Globalization has reduced the world into a global village in almost all fronts: social, political and economic (Czinkota, 2008; Kafouros, 2008). This makes it imperative for businesses to think of their sustainability in terms of expanding its services to international markets. Most companies in the United Arabs Emirates are investing huge chunks of money in a bid to make their products and services attractive to the international market. In doing so, their marketing strategies have been changed to a great extent.

The Abu Dhabi National Hotels partners with ADTA in the development of the tourism profile, improvement of its profile and development of marketing strategies whose tentacles spread across the world. Of particular, concern the countries of Western Europe have been identified as the primary target market by the company, especially Germany and United Kingdom. The Abu Dhabi National Hotel plans to increase the number of its hotel rooms to about 20 000 by 2015, thereby boosting the total to about 27 500 rooms.

This expansion strategy has so far worked well ever since the company’s management set it into motion. For instance, ADNH recorded an increment of 47 percent in profits which translated to about Dh 106.6 in the first quarter of 2005. This was an impressive increment when compared to the first quarter of 2004 when the company had garnered a profit of Dh 72.7 (Jais, 2006).

Product: the products that ADNH captures the essence of globalization in the sense that most of them target the customers from all across the globe. These products range from hotel chains, tourism, catering groups and transport which are not only consumed by the United Arab Emirates market but also tourists from all across the world.

Promotion: the Abu Dhabi National Hotels is a major partner with the tourist markets in European countries where they target to expand its markets. For instance, during the exhibition of IBT in 2010, the ADNH conducted meetings with travel agencies in German and European; they were acquainted with procedures of handling media specialists and also stimulate co-operation with the Gulf Co-operation Council (Shaw, 1995).

Placement: The Abu Dhabi National Hotels company has positioned itself as a leading provider in the tourism and hospitality industry sector. The company has therefore organized itself into five business segments, which include hotels, catering, contract services and retail services.

Conclusion

In this paper we have looked at how globalization has affected the conduction of business in Coca Cola Company. We have established that one of these effects is that globalization has expanded the need for the Coca Cola Company to diversify its marketing strategy according to the needs of the locality of where it is  situated across the globe. We have also seen that globalization has enabled the expansion of networks between the company and its other partners such as the bottlers.

On the other hand, we have also established that the Abu Dhabi National Hotels has also benefited from globalization through the expansion of markets. Globalization has also been the catalyst that has led to the development of the tourism infrastructure in the Abu Dhabi National Hotel Company in the quest to attract customers from all across the world, with particular emphasis on those who are coming from the European countries. Thirdly, given that the Abu Dhabi National Hotels Company is a hospitality service provider, we have noted that globalization has seen to the company facing stiff competition not just within the United Arab Emirate hospitality companies but also from the across the world. This has further led to the need of creating linkages with tourism stakeholders such as government policy makers in the European countries. This has led to the company organizing exhibitions through which stakeholders exchange contacts and ideas.

In a nutshell, the current business trends can be attributed to globalization from the pricing of products and services, their placement and promotions. We can therefore conclude that globalization has helped both the Coca Cola Company and the Abu Dhabi National Hospital in developing its products and service delivery. 

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