In recent years, Coca-Cola attempted to enter the Indian market once again. Georgia-based Coca-Cola was attracted to India's market because India's per capita consumption of carbonated beverages is less than half of Pakistan and about five per cent of China's. India has the fastest-growing demand for consumer products in the world. Coke's first attempt to enter the Indian market a decade earlier had resulted in gross mismanagement, which led to the company losing $20 billion Indian Rupees. In that first attempt, Coca-Cola purchased Thumbs Up, the leading India-based carbonated soft drink. The company hoped to replace Thumbs Up with Coke while maintaining the Thumbs Up distribution strategy. For its return to the market, Coca-Cola built five plants, cut costly staff, revamped transport, shrunk bottles and made them lighter to increase a trucks carrying capacity. It also increased its number of distributors and dumped a global advertising campaign that proved irrelevant to the Indian market
In order to increased distribution of their product, Coca-Cola supplied finance to retailers so they could purchase refrigeration units and organised for the refrigeration manufacturer to give deep price discounts.
Required
First, you are to read carefully the case mentioned above. Second, you are then required to answer the following questions in the context of the information you have learnt in Module 1.
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What do you think were the challenges faced by Coco Cola when they attempted to enter the Indian market the first time? What did they do wrong?