Coca Cola Initiative Coca Cola's Recent and Ongoing Integration Initiative: Legal Implications and Recommendations

No company continue to prosper without continuing to grow and adapt -- markets and operating environments are in a constant state of evolution, and companies must respond in kind in order to maintain efficiency and profitability, and to ensure that their products and distribution methods are in keeping with market demand. Many company adaptations are achieved through subtle and simple changes, however at times more significant change initiatives are implemented in order to bring about more profound and widespread organizational changes. These initiatives can have significant legal implications and consequences if they are not undertaken with proper planning and care, and the larger an organization is the more complex these implications can become. The following pages discuss the potential implications of an ongoing initiative at the Coca Cola Company.

Company and Initiative Overview

Coca Cola is a well-known company and brand with a global product distribution network and incredibly strong sales performance and profitability (Coca Cola, 2011; Yahoo Finance, 2012; Hoovers, 2012). Despite this profitability, the company continues to seek further means of increasing efficiency and its profit margins through many initiatives (Coca Cola, 2011). The company has also faced legal issues in the past from some of its operations, on a variety of fronts, and needs to move carefully in current plans and programs (Hoovers, 2012).

One initiative that Coca Cola began in 2008 and that it continues to expand in international as well as domestic markets is what the company terms its "integration...

The business model employed by the company includes a largely detached and independently owned distribution network the components of which are nonetheless often solely dependent on the company, leading to a complex relationship often seen as imbalanced (Hoovers, 2012; Coca Cola, 2011). Part of the company's current and future efforts is to fully acquire distribution companies and networks in certain regions, taking over operations in order to reduce costs and increase profitability with direct-to-consumer (or direct-to-retailer) sales (Coca Cola, 2011). This has several legal implications in a variety of areas, all of which must be carefully considered by the company.
Administrative Law

One of the most relevant areas of administrative law in regards to the proposed integration initiative are anti-trust laws, which exist in many countries in which Coca-Cola operates and which limit the degree to which a company can control a given product/market/industry through integration and ownership. In Germany, where Coca Cola hopes to engage in especially strong efforts to obtain ownership and integration of the distribution network, relatively recent laws making it more difficult to keep or obtain market control have been put into place (Rudo, 2012). The European Commission has already accused the company of violating fair competition laws, and thus the company should be especially careful (WRBM, 2004).

The impact that such laws could have on Coca Cola's integration efforts are quite significant. Though it is of course legal for the company to sell its own products to retailers and even directly to consumers rather than relying on a disconnected supply chain of…