The above link is to a Blog that describes how Coca-cola’s has reinvented its corporate website, titling their website “Coca-Cola Journey, Featuring content themed around pop culture, social media, brand history, marketing campaigns, recipes, career advice, and more the website is a far cry from the traditional corporate website.
The blog further comments on how the new site is so incredibly responsive to the customer. This is a statement I couldn’t agree more with Coke clearly did its homework, “In response to consumer feedback and site data, Coca-Cola made more than 60 tweaks to the site, including adding in sections related to food and music.” Coke is clearly willing to male many changes to its public image to satisfy the needs of the consumer, they are clearly willing to go the extra mile to respond to the consumers changing demand.
As consumers can post their own experiences with coke directly on the site Coke has greatly decreased the knowledge gap between them and the consumer. Which is great as the new site has received an incredible amount of public support and public, illustrating how by listening to the consumer Coke has greatly improved its product.
However after reading this blog I visited Coke’s website myself and found it not to be as customer centric as this post lead me to believe. Although the site was visually appealing it was really confusing to navigate. This is shocking to me because as we discussed in class, usually the customer’s willing to go the extra mile to discuss a product are those who have something negative to say about it. With such few negative comments about the product, I am lead to believe coke is filtering out much of its customer stories.
Furthermore, as I had difficulty navigating the site, I am sure older loyal coke drinkers are having the same issue. As this large segment of consumers are likely unheard and coke thinks they have been able to capture the responses of a majority of pop consumers, it is possible that coke is actually creating a larger knowledge gap between them and their elder more loyal consumers.
All in all this was a very interesting post, but it does overlook a few mistakes in consumer research coke is making.