Market Segmentation of Coca-cola and Pepsi

The market segmentation tactics differ very drastically and especially for Coca-cola and Pepsi. One of them likes targeting a segment of people who just wants to shine bright, speak louder, another brand targets people who want to be happy in a moment. Here, we should understand that the segmentation strategies of the brands are based on psychological, behavioral patterns. Now we shall discuss their segmentation tactics with case studies and deeply examined examples.

Market segmentation tactics of Coca-Cola and examples.

We would look through their commercials and see what kind of personalities and people are present here.

Brotherly love

In the commercial, we are witnessing a story about 2 brothers who fight with each other and do not get along well. The elder brother always makes tricks on the little one, and one day when the little brother was having trouble with other guys in the school the elder brother comes for help.

Here we see a segment of young boys who live an active life, who do sports on a daily bases, playing both computer games and real-life games.

The boys like coca-cola a lot and they drink it whenever they could afford to buy, here is a complete segment for the soft drink company.

Another interesting fact is the thing that they target not a segment of people but emotions. Brothership and friendship are the notions that Coca-cola likes putting on the scene every time we see their friendship commercials

Here are other segments that coca-cola targets.

And here is another great commercial by Coca-cola about a cashier girl who gets seduced by a sexy guy who enters the shop and drinks coca-cola. The following commercial is spread worldwide and different versions of the commercial are released in different parts of the world.

So here we see that Coca-Cola primarily targets girls who have a boring life. And the handsome guy is like a Coca-cola who comes to fill the life girl’s life with joy and passion. So who are these people? What is the name of the cashier girl segment?

The following segment is called Naysayers who like saying NO to everybody and do not have great expectations from life. They like having a calm life which is not full of challenges and goals. They are rather a hard-working segment because they know exactly nothing in life is free.

The following segment does not pay attention to their looks and think the clothes are not important, you are what you are, you do not need any sophistication in style.

They like buying cheap local brands which are mainstream ones, the internet and technology confuse them a little and that’s why they do not do online shopping or do it with the help of a friend. Coca-Cola targets the segment as they need a moment of joy that Coca-Cola can give them, and make their lives joyful and happy.

While we are analyzing Coca-Cola segmentation tactics we can not take into consideration their messaging and communication tactics.

Joy and happiness are the targets of Coca-Cola messaging tactics. Once they say to open the happiness, another time tastes the feeling. We see here that they try to make the customer feel one and only as if the world is made for them with the help of the drink.

Here is one of their Facebook post examples.

We see 2 friends are having dinner with coca-cola coffee and just laughing. The meeting of 2 friends is a cool event where they chat and have fun as much as possible. Here again, we are witnessing the greatness of the moment.

Coca-cola spreads innocence and happy feelings as the brand is based on the Innocent brand archetype. What does the Innocent brand archetype represent?

• The desire of the brand archetype is to experience paradise.
• The goal of the archetype is to be happy.
• The strategy is doing things in the right way.

Many brands like Mcdonald’s and Dove have been using the brand archetype as a primary source of branding.

The brand archetype could be a perfect personality for your brand if

1. Your brand provides a simple answer to a complex problem.
2. The product is associated with goodness, morality, and nostalgia.
3. You want to differentiate your product from a darkened image.

Here are some interesting facts about Coca-Cola.

• Coca-Cola cans were firstly made for soldiers.
• The drink was once made for a Russian general Zhukov.
• Coca-cola tried to replace coffee with its products, but it was in vain.
• In reality, their secret formula is not a secret at all, it is so simple.

And now we shall discuss the segmentation strategy of Pepsi.

Here I am going to present a screenshot of their latest commercial.

Here is one of the latest Pepsi commercials, where football celebrities are starring like Pogba, Messi or Salah. The commercial is very intriguing and funny and is full of interesting episodes. And from this commercial, we can find out that Pepsi likes targeting fans of football stars and they make a commercial starring with 4 football players at the same time.

So it is obvious that Pepsi is targeting the fans of these stars and there are millions of them.

Whether they are young people or old ones. Their passion is football and, of course, they are people who like to drink soft drinks on a daily bases. We can call them authentic people who like watching the games of their favorite clubs on a daily bases.

In this commercial, we are also witnessing that the 4 players are all from different clubs. Messi is for Barcelona, Pogba for Manchester United, Sterling for Manchester city and Salah for Liverpool.

So we can sum up the 4 clubs and have a billion football fans. But creating such kind of commercial claims a lot of budget of course.

So let’s discuss another commercial of Pepsi where we can see a specific segment of customers.

Here is the famous Kendall Jenner commercial where she is with people who are protesting and who want to live louder. Although the commercial was a real scandal because of the political accentuations, it had a huge success and people watching it want to live louder. So, let’s discuss the personality types that are present in the add.

The group of people is called Hedonist. Who are Hedonists?

Hedonists are a segment of people who want to live louder, jump on the music stage without thinking about the consequences. They like to live every moment of life with full enjoyment and this is their aim to do as much fun as possible.

They have a rather mucho attitude to life, the point of drinking is to get drunk, the wife’s place is at home.

Hedonists spend very much and without thinking, if they feel they want it they would buy it without further thinking. If they find a brand they really like they would tell it everybody about the admiration, but as soon as they see that something is wrong with the product they can detest the brand and tell their friends not to buy it.

So Pepsi wants them to be a fan of their product and gives them all the reasons to love and adore it.

Pepsi has a specific kind of messaging tactics.

They tell us every time to “Taste the feeling” or “For the love of it”. These are the main ideas that Pepsi wants us to know. So what we see here is about intimate relations and love. “Taste the feeling” slogan tells us that Pepsi is a feeling, you do not taste the drink, you just taste the feeling. 

“For the love of it” says that we should do everything for the love of it, not just for the sake of it but for the love of it. We see that Pepsi provides us the messaging of the eternal feeling “love”.

Here we see that Pepsi is using the tactics of the Lover brand archetype. What does the lover brand archetype represent?

1. The desire of the archetype is to attain intimacy.
2. The goal of the archetype is being in a relationship with the surrounding people or things they love.
3. The strategy of the brand archetype is becoming more and more attractive to others.

Many brands like Chanel and Loreal are using the following brand archetype for their messaging and branding purposes.

The lover brand archetype could be a perfect fit for your product if

• If your brand helps people to find love and friendship.
• If your product provides beauty, closeness, and communication.
• The product has pricing with moderate to high.

Here are some catchy facts about Pepsi.

1. An astonishing fact is that Pepsi was once called Brad’s drink.
2. Pepsi was the first to use 2-liter bottles.
3. Skywriting marketing was firstly used by Pepsi in 1932.
4. Pepsi-cola was the first company to be manufactured and sold in Us.
5. During the past 126 years, Pepsi has been using 11 logos.
6. Pepsi has been experimented with various formulas in different countries to find out the best ones.

Here are just 2 interesting examples of segmentation strategies. Pepsi and Coca-Cola are great while referring to the segmentation strategies of all the companies in the world. Find out interesting articles about many different marketing tactics in the blog thesocialgrabber.com.