Coca-Cola Information Management

Coca-Cola as we know it is a huge beverage giant. The amount of data compiled by this company is overwhelming. With such a large collection of data the company has created many different programs designed to turn useless data into profit. I would like to discuss one of these programs in order to describe how they gather this information, what type of information they gather, and how this information helps Coca-Cola market its products.

In order to gather useful information the Coca-Cola Company has partnered local retail stores. Their goal is to not only gather information that is useful to their business, but to help retail stores in gaining more business for themselves. Through this partnership Coke can use the data that is collected by the retail stores through scanners, frequent shopper card programs, and collective observations made by store employees to learn how to better market their products. Retailers that have chosen to participate in this program have also allowed Coke to use their stores as a real-world laboratory, conducting long-term marketing experiments to gather their own data.

The type of information gathered varies from store to store. Information gathered by store scanners produce universal product codes, number of items purchased, price, time, and the store name and location. The stores that offer frequent shopper programs can track transactions to specific households and monitor purchasing patterns. The observations made by the store employees, as well as Coke's marketing researchers, help to identify shopping behaviors. Did the customer browse or go straight to a particular product. Did Coke's products sell better when located in the front of the store or the back? Were sales higher for Coke's products when placed next to candy products or rival soda products? This information is what the marketing department at Coca-Cola is looking for. Once the information has been gathered it can be formatted to run through Coke's proprietary