Winning Marketing and Business Strategies in a Highly Competitive and Globalized Economic Environment: A Case Study of Fortune 500 companies— Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Amazon
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Abstract
Every company needs a marketing strategy to do well in a highly competitive and globalized environment. The marketing function is ubiquitous, and several studies establish a positive relationship between marketing activities and the growth of the associated company (Samiee, 1980); (Köksal & Özgül, 2007). Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Amazon not only have a large market share in their respective fields but are also far ahead of their competitors owing to their competitive marketing strategies (Fortune, 2021). This paper analyzes the marketing strategies employed by Coca-Cola, Amazon and Microsoft to sell and
establish their products & services and study aspects such as coherence, sustainability, key
success factors and alignment of their business models with the marketing strategies employed.
The paper also compares the marketing strategies of these three companies that are market
leaders in their respective fields to find similarities that are the best practices which could be
useful for other companies to follow. These three companies have been chosen because they
differ considerably in the products and services they sell and hence are not direct competitors.
All the three companies are global giants and without a doubt their marketing strategies have
helped them lead in the market segments they occupy. Common marketing strategies that evolve
out of this study can be used as a generic marketing strategy for any company that aims to
emulate these market-leading companies. As Rajiv Batra mentions in the Handbook of
Marketing in an Age of Disruptions (Parvatiyar & Sisodia, 2018), marketers need to be able to
sense the new and unmet demands of the consumers in this era of disruptions and these Fortune
500 companies have been able to do that sustainably.
Fortune 500 is a list of 500 top-most companies compiled by the
Fortune magazine every year based on descending order of their
annual revenues. The magazine started compiling its list of most
successful American companies in 1955. It included both public
and private companies that were competing in the manufacturing, mining, and energy sectors. It was only in 1995 that service companies were included in this list for the first time. As per the 2021
rankings, Amazon is at number 2 position, Microsoft is at number 15,
and Coca-Cola is at 93 with annual revenues of USD 386.06 billion,
USD 143.01 billion, and USD 33.01 billion.
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