Sanjiv gupta coca cola

The key problems that Gupta should focus on in the short term are the safety and quality standards of Coca-Cola as well as gaining constituent trust back. Coca-Cola had several issues pertaining to safety prior to the incident in India for example Belgium 1999 when 250 people became sick after drinking coke and Kinley Bottle water 2003 showing evidence of pesticides.(Argenti 2016) The crisis in India was not a first for coke and if it isn't taken seriously it won't be the last. Coca-Cola has not provided proof of their world wide quality and as a consumer i'm inclined to believe their drinks do contain pesticides. The short and long term requirement is to ensure the overall safety of their consumers. Communication in the long term needs to be better in order for consumers to trust that Coca-Cola intends to take quality more seriously even if they always have.

Coke's communication has a history of being delayed when a crisis hits which means that they didn't access the risk within their organization. Instead of identifying potential crisis, setting communication objectives for the crisis and assigning teams to the issues they wait and hope that the problems will fade away. (Argenti 2016 p 277) Communication should be early and often, the pesticides findings could cause threat to health which means a spokesperson should be providing accurate information as soon as possible. They must control the situation at all times or at the least appear to. When communicating Coke needs to minimize some of their messages to just convey information to those people affected (consumers, employees). Even if the news is bad they need to communicate all the information they have that the people may need, honesty is a responsibility.

The key constituents are the consumers, media and employees. Coca-Cola needs to tell the honest truth about their findings and what they plan to do in order to meet safety standards. Coke could have avoided the crisis if they had taken their previous situations seriously and actually changed. It is no mere coincidence that they are constantly linked to pesticide issues. Gupta could have spoken to the public immediately and worked to make healthy positive changes. Had proper risk management been utilized to access the possible risks to the company they could have at least been prepared for the fall out that was guaranteed to take place once again.