twitter advertising by coca-cola - University of Ghana http ...

TWITTER ADVERTISING BY COCA-COLA; THE MULTINATIONAL BRAND

AND A LOCAL SUBSIDIARY

BY

SAMUEL RICHIE EKOW BOAKYE

10419954

THIS DISSERTATION IS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA,

LEGON

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF

MA COMMUNICATION STUDIES DEGREE

JULY, 2020

University of Ghana http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh

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DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my mother Ellen. Thank you for being there.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to God for the strength to carry out this study towards my master’s degree. I am

grateful to my supervisor, Rev. Fr Dominic Maximilian Ofori, for his time and effort in

guiding me throughout the research. I appreciate each lecturer at the Department of

Communication Studies, University of Ghana, for shaping me in an all new discipline. I am

eternally grateful.

I also want to thank my family for being supportive in this educational rollercoaster. I would

choose you all over and again.

Finally, to all my mates and teaching assistants from the Department of Communication

Studies, thanks for being there. You have always proved some angels ‘charge’ the earth too.


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ABSTRACT

As businesses expand from their home country to other countries, communicating to the new

markets is of utmost importance. Social media have over the years been useful in

communicating to different markets in real time. Social media go beyond geographical

boundaries, reaching everyone who has access. This research was done to study Twitter

advertising by multinational brands and their local subsidiaries. Using Coca-Cola as a case

study. The study is qualitative in nature, employing textual analysis. Based on Katz and

Blumler's uses and gratifications theory, the study found how Coca-Cola gratified the needs

of different markets, using Twitter. The findings showed that Coca-Cola, while advertising

and communicating on Twitter, meet the needs of their audiences through pop culture, sports,

festivities, promotions, and consumer interactivities. This study adds to African

communication scholarship on multinational brand advertising. Further, it contributes to

knowledge of local subsidiary advertising strategies on Twitter in the advertising literature.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ..................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

DEDICATION .......................................................................................................................... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... iii

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................................... v

CHAPTER ONE ........................................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Background to the Study ................................................................................................. 2

1.1.1 Social Media ............................................................................................................. 2

1.1.2 Twitter Advertising ................................................................................................... 4

1.1.3 Coca-Cola ................................................................................................................. 4

1.2 Statement of the Problem................................................................................................. 5

1.3 Research Objectives......................................................................................................... 7

1.4 Research Questions .......................................................................................................... 7

1.5 Organisation of Work ...................................................................................................... 8

1.6 Significance of Study ....................................................................................................... 8

1.7 Delimitations of Study ..................................................................................................... 9

CHAPTER TWO ..................................................................................................................... 11

LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................................ 11


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2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 11

2.2 Review of Related Literature ......................................................................................... 11

2.2.1 Multinational Brand Advertising ............................................................................ 11

2.2.2 Social Media in Multinational Brand Advertising .................................................. 13

2.2.3 Brand Engagement on Social Media ....................................................................... 16

2.3 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................. 17

2.3.1 Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT)................................................................... 17

2.3.2 Uses and gratification in this study ......................................................................... 18

CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................................. 21

METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................. 21

3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 21

3.2 Research Design ............................................................................................................ 21

3.3 Setting and Population ................................................................................................... 22

3.4 Sampling ........................................................................................................................ 23

3.5 Data Collection .............................................................................................................. 23

3.6 Coding Technique .......................................................................................................... 24

3.6.1 Pop culture .............................................................................................................. 24

3.6.2 Sports ...................................................................................................................... 24

3.6.3 Festivities ................................................................................................................ 24

3.6.4 Consumer interactivity ............................................................................................ 25

3.6.5 Promotions and web traffic ..................................................................................... 25


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3.7 Data Analysis ................................................................................................................. 25

3.8 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 25

CHAPTER FOUR ................................................................................................................... 26

PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION........................................................ 26

4.1 Overview........................................................................................................................ 26

4.2 Findings ......................................................................................................................... 27

4.2.1 Pop Culture ............................................................................................................. 27

4.2.2 Sports ...................................................................................................................... 28

4.2.3 Festivities ................................................................................................................ 29

4.2.4 Consumer interactivity ............................................................................................ 30

4.2.5 Promotions and Web traffic .................................................................................... 31

4.3 Discussion of Key Findings ........................................................................................... 32

4.3.1 How does Coca-Cola use Twitter for advertising and communication? ................ 32

4.3.2 What are the similarities and differences in the Twitter advertisements for Coca-

Cola Company Limited and Coca-Cola Ghana Limited? ................................................ 33

4.3.3 In what ways do Coca-Cola’s Twitter advertising affect the ads of their local

subsidiaries? ..................................................................................................................... 34

4.3.4 How does Coca-Cola engage their consumers on Twitter? .................................... 35

4.4 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 35

CHAPTER FIVE ..................................................................................................................... 37

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS............... 37

5.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 37


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5.2 Summary of the Study ................................................................................................... 37

5.3 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 38

5.4 Limitations of the Study ................................................................................................ 39

5.5 Recommendations.......................................................................................................... 39

5.6 Chapter Summary .......................................................................................................... 40

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 42

APPENDICES ......................................................................................................................... 49


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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Multinational brands are corporations that engage in commercial activities in and

outside their country of origin. Mayrhofer and Prange (2015) define such companies by how

the company effectively controls or influences the decision-making process of the foreign wing

of the business. These corporations, in effect, operate in several regions and will have to

advertise to consumers in all the regions in which the corporations operate. Hence,

multinational brands have taken advantage of social media like Twitter to reach audiences. A

study by Barnes, Lescault, and Andonian (2012) found that as of the year 2011, 73 per cent of

top 500 multinational brands had Twitter accounts, arguing that social media have become

important to multinational brands.

This study looked at the advertising of multinational brand, Coca-Cola on Twitter.

Coca-Cola Company is a soft drink company that started in 1886, with their flagship

drink Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Company exists in over 200 countries producing over 500

different beverages. In March 2009, the multinational brand, Coca-Cola signed on to Twitter

and posted its first tweet. Subsequently, the Ghanaian subsidiary created a Twitter account in

March 2015, beginning Coca-Cola communications on Twitter.

This chapter talks about background to the study, which gives an insight into Twitter

advertising and Coca-Cola. The problem of the research is stated as well as the research

objectives and the research questions to guide the study. Also, the chapter shows the importance

of the study to scholars, researchers and industry players as well as the delimitation of the

research.


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1.1 Background to the Study

Since the inception of new technology, such as new media, many companies have

shifted from traditional ways of operating. For instance, the use of paper-based recordkeeping,

messaging by postal services and print advertising, among others, has decreased because of

new methods of operating with the internet. Now, companies have access to digital database

management, e-mailing and social media advertising. The advent of the internet has developed

businesses and has triggered an increase in innovation at workplaces (Ciobanu & Neamtu,

2017). Subsequently, social media have become popular among business corporations, because

some targets of the businesses can be found on social media.

1.1.1 Social Media

Social media, according to Merriam-Webster (2019) “are forms of electronic

communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which

users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other

content (such as videos).” These electronic communication use internet applications that make

it possible to create and transmit content in the form of words, pictures, videos, and audios with

ease.

Social media sites have been categorised into groups namely, microblogging sites,

media sharing sites, bookmarking sites, social networks, blog comments and forums, social

news sites, and finally, social gaming and virtual worlds. Microblogging sites allow users to

put up short posts on feeds for other users to see (Java, Song, Finin & Tsen, 2007). Twitter and

Facebook are examples in the microblogging category. Media sharing sites are sites where

people create profiles to share and manage media in the form of photos, audio and videos (Safko

& Brake, 2009, pp. 27-28). Media sharing sites include Vimeo, Rhapsody and YouTube.

Bookmarking sites are sites that allow users to tag sites that other users can also access. Social

bookmarking sites allow annotation, editing, and sharing of such tags (Khan & Sharma, 2017).


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Pinterest and Flipboard are examples of such bookmarking sites. Social networks are sites

where people create profiles and are allowed to connect with other people of similar interest

(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Examples of social networks include Facebook and LinkedIn. Blog

comments and forums are forums that allow users to comment on topics posted on the online

communities (Bach, Hai & Phuong, 2016). Quora and Nairaland are examples in this category.

Social news sites give users access to news and links to other articles where users vote on their

prominence (Weninger, Zhu & Han, 2013). Sites like Reddit and Digg fall within the social

news category. Social gaming and virtual worlds are sites allow users to create or join

immersive settings, which are enabled by a network of computers for real time interaction

(Girvan, 2013). Immersive settings of these virtual worlds are used for educational, gaming and

other recreational purposes. Examples include Second Life and World of Warcraft.

The ability of social media to accommodate convergence in communication and take

feedback has presented brands the ability to be advertised with vast options. Social media, with

an effective strategy can increase return on investments (Kumar & Mirchandani, 2012). In

2019, a worldwide statistics portal, Statista ranked the top 10 social media apps, based their

popularity and user base. They were Facebook, Whatsapp, QQ, WeChat, QZone, Tumblr,

Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and Baidu (Clement, 2019).

According to a 2018 Statista report, in the year 2010, 9.7 million people were on social

media globally but the number was expected to reach 2.77 billion by the end of 2019 (Clement,

2019). Inherent in this is the revelation that social media offer a good medium for reaching out

to a large number of audiences. These audiences can be reached, regardless of geographical

barriers, thereby making it possible for companies to build global presence, which is vital to

multinational brands. This study focuses on Twitter advertising by multinational brands and

their local subsidiaries, using Coca-Cola in the study.


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1.1.2 Twitter Advertising

Twitter is described by Kwak, Lee, Park, and Moon (2010) as a microblogging site,

which uses posts, known as tweets, to communicate. Tweets originally only had a 140character

limit. In November 2017, Twitter doubled the number of characters per tweet to 280 for most

languages. Twitter is a new form of RSS (aggregated feeds), Instant Messenger, and a Short

Message Service. Twitter is a place where business is conducted as it enables advertisers to

post links to direct consumers to website of businesses (Suster, 2010).

Twitter (2019) categorises some Twitter advertising into cards. These cards are tweets,

which have been put in a package with web links that lead one to the website of the brand, or

to a webpage where the software application of the brand can be downloaded. These cards can

be promoted advertisements, which are not necessarily sent to only followers of the brand’s

Twitter account. The cards could also be targeted advertisements, which are sent to specific

audiences based on their recent activities. Though promoted advertisements work well to reach

target audiences, multinational brands like Coca-Cola still go a step further create multiple

accounts, which are operated by their local subsidiaries in order to communicate with audiences

in those localities. Here, Coca-Cola uses a simpler form of advertising by posting tweets.

Advertisers hereby use Twitter as an attempt at “starting the conversation rather than

concluding it” as argued by Murthy (2013).

1.1.3 Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is a soft drink which is produced by the Coca-Cola Company, headquartered

in Georgia, USA. The drink was invented in 1886 by John Stith Pemberton (later sold to Asa

Griggs Candler) as an alcohol free drink and intended as a patent medicine

(Eschner, 2017). Coca-Cola has since its commercialisation, has been a top brand worldwide.


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Coca-Cola in Africa started in 1989 with the franchise of Coca-Cola Company for Equatorial

Guinea, expanding to Guinea, Mauritania, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and The Gambia then

finally to Ghana, Morocco and Algeria (Daurella, 2017).

In Ghana, the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Ghana Limited was formed by a

divestiture in March 1995 of Ghana National Trading Corporation's Bottling Division. The

Company produces and markets Coca-Cola and its affiliate drinks such as Fanta and Sprite,

nationwide (GNPC 2010). Coca-Cola over the years has market its products in Ghana through

outdoor advertisements such as billboards, branded bus stops, coke kiosks and activation

events. Coca-Cola Ghana, also engages in electronic media advertisements on radio and

television, as well as print media advertisements. As new media gained prominence in Ghana,

Coca-Cola has taken advantage of the internet to reach audiences on social media.

In March 2015, a Twitter account was created for Coca-Cola Ghana to communicate to the

Ghanaian audience.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The advancement in internet technology has brought with it many improvements to the

business climate such as ease of operation and effectiveness. These improvements in internet

technology will be adopted by a number of people. Target consumers of advertisers may be in

this group of adopters and as such advertisers will have to keep up with the pace in order to

reach such clients. Exponential growth in new technology such as social media have gained

interest among business advertisers.

As businesses expand out of their home regions, the number of people businesses have

to reach increases. Such expansion calls for communication media that reach all targets of the

business. Social media present a form of omnipresence such brands seek. Ayivor (2015) and

Zhang and Mao (2016) noted that social media have become popular among businesses, and as

such, businesses have been experimenting the prospects social media.


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Some of these businesses which are multinational such as Coca-Cola have added social media

to their means of communication and even created social media accounts for their local

subsidiaries around the world.

The Coca-Cola Company over the years has a good track of integrated market

communications (Stringer, 2015). Since the year 2014, Coca-Cola has won World Branding

Awards for the beverage – soft drink category (World Branding Forum, 2019). At the local

level, Coca Cola’s outstanding performance in social media was rewarded in Ghana’s 7th

National PR and Communication Excellence Awards. This award was picked up by Coca-

Cola’s advertising agency, Ogilvy Ghana (Tetteh, 2019). Though both levels (global and local)

of the company are being lauded at their respective levels, there is hardly any scholarship on

how the brands use social media for advertising and communication.

Studies such as Whitelock, Cadogan and Ogasaki (2013), and Alalwan, Rana, Dwivedi,

and Algharabat (2017) have researched three “key theoretical approaches” which, enable a

better knowledge of social media to advertisers. There is, however, limited scholarship on how

local subsidiaries of multinational brands can leverage social media. There are two main

schools of thought for local subsidiaries in brand communication. The first school of thought

recommends the local subsidiary stick to the standard messaging strategy set by the global

level; then, the second school of thought recommends the messaging strategy must be adapted

to the local market (Leonidou, Katsikeas & Coudounaris, 2010).

Research that examines both multinational brands and their local subsidiaries on Twitter

advertising is scarce. Although Samiee, Jeong, Pae and Tai (2003) researched the advertising

standards of multinationals and their subsidiaries, the use of Twitter as a platform for

advertising was not investigated in their study. There is therefore a need for research to compare

the strategy at a global and local level as well as how their messaging affects each other.

Scholarship on multinational brand advertising has become more important because brands

keep expanding out of their home regions and therefore in-depth research from scholars will


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give a better understanding of global standardisation of advertisements and localisation of

advertisements. The study hopes to find out which strategy a successful company like Coca-

Cola works with for the benefit of researchers, scholars, and organizations. The study brings to

light what will be best practice on Twitter advertising for a multinational. In scholarship, the

study looks at the conversation of standardisation and localisation of advertisements in the

African landscape. In practice, players in industry can determine efficiency of advertisements

using reviewed models in this study. Ultimately, this study is looking at Twitter advertising by

multinational brands and their local subsidiaries with a focus on Coca-Cola.

1.3 Research Objectives

The overarching objective of this study is to investigate Twitter advertising of CocaCola

and its local subsidiary in Ghana. The following research objectives will guide the study:

i. To investigate how Coca-Cola use Twitter for advertising and communication;

ii. To analyse the similarities and differences between Twitter advertising of Coca-Cola

Company limited and Coca-Cola Ghana limited.

iii. To investigate how Twitter advertising by Coca-Cola affect their local subsidiaries.

The objectives set above will reveal how social media, such as Twitter works to help in advertising

multinational brands.

1.4 Research Questions

The following research questions seek to meet the objectives of the study:

i. How does Coca-Cola use Twitter for advertising and communication?

ii. What are the similarities and differences in the Twitter advertisements for Coca-Cola

Company Limited and Coca-Cola Ghana Limited?

iii. In what ways do Coca-Cola’s Twitter advertising affect the ads of their local

subsidiaries?


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By answering the research questions above, this study will expose the relevance of social

media, such as Twitter to multinational brands. The responses will add to scholarship on how

multinational brands when faced with the multiple routes of advertising can select the route

which works well, using recommendations from this study that address their specific situations.

1.5 Organisation of Work

This work comprises five chapters. The first chapter gives a perspective and background

to the study, states the problem of the study, and articulates the research objectives and research

questions. The chapter also gives the significance of the study as well as the delimitations of

the study. In the second chapter, related literature reviewed and articulates the theoretical

framework. The third chapter introduces the methodology and how data were collected for the

research. The data collected are analysed in the fourth chapter, with chapter five presenting a

summary of findings, conclusions, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future

study.

1.6 Significance of Study

This study, which sought to explore multinational and local brand advertising on social

media, is of importance to scholars, researchers, and industry players. Ayivor (2015) argues

that research on brand advertising on social media should be expanded to create a well-rounded

perspective on how brands use social media. Thus, the study adds to research on the analysis

of Twitter advertisements by multinational brands and their Ghanaian subsidiary. This research

employs the uses and gratification theory, thereby contributing to the application of the theory

for researchers. Twitter advertising is quite different from mainstream (traditional) advertising,

due to Twitter’s bi-directional and interactive communication. The study therefore adds to

communication scholarship by demonstrating that Twitter is an effective medium for

advertisements, and Twitter advertisements in multinational branding requires a different


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approach from single brand advertisements. Marketing or advertising units in multinational

organisations may engage this work in decision-making for Twitter advertising for global

brands and local subsidiaries.

1.7 Delimitations of Study

This study is limited to Twitter as the medium for advertising by multinational brands

and their local subsidiary because out of the top ten social media applications ranked by

Statista in 2019, Facebook, Whatsapp, QQ, WeChat, QZone, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter,

Google+ and Baidu, four of them (QQ, WeChat, QZone and Baidu) are widely used in China

but hardly used outside China and as such, will not be useful for this study. Instagram and

Tumblr are media sharing social media sites which are structured purposively for media sharing

and captioning. Instagram and Tumblr are not ideal for this study because the advertisements

may sometimes be text-based and not limited to media. Google+ and

WhatsApp were eliminated from the study due to matters regarding accessibility. Without a

Google account, it is impossible to get a Google+ account, and individuals cannot follow

businesses on Google+. WhatsApp was ruled out since it is not a public social media

application. WhatsApp is encrypted from user to user making it more convenient for

conversation than advertising.

Facebook, which is closest to Twitter was however ruled out from this study because

Facebook has had security issues in recent times. In 2018 Cambridge Analytica illegally

harvested Facebook users’ data for political advertising (Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison,

2018), making Facebook a target for political attacks and data manipulation. Therefore, the

research eliminates Facebook based on security interferences and privacy breech. Twitter

however has verification devices, both text and multimedia messaging capacities, as well as

user-friendly features, making it ideal for this study.


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The brand in focus for the study is Coca-Cola, from the Coca-Cola Company Limited

and its Ghanaian subsidiary. The choice of Coca-Cola is due to its popular worldwide, as it is

sold in every country but Cuba and North Korea making Coca-Cola an epitome of multinational

brand.


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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter reviews literature relevant to the study and the theory underpinning this

study, the uses and gratification theory, will be examined.

2.2 Review of Related Literature

This section reviews scholarly works concerning social media and multinational brands.

The review has been organised under three themes, multinational brand advertising, social

media in multinational brand advertising, and brand engagement on social media.

2.2.1 Multinational Brand Advertising

For multinational brands, international advertising comes as a necessary consideration

in decision-making as it holds the power to target audiences beyond one country

(Athapaththu, 2015). Related studies (Schmid & Kotulla, 2011; Wang & Yang, 2011 Matricano

& Vitagliano, 2018) reveal that when multinational brands decide to advertise, the brand may

opt for either standardising the advertisements or adapting the advertisement to the local

market. In standardising the advertisement, the advertising strategy used is the same globally;

mostly through the same delivery routes and sometimes executed by the same advertising

agency worldwide. Adapting the advertisement to suit local markets, gives each subsidiary of

the multinational brand tailored advertising routes which suits the market situation of the given

region.

Kanso and Nelson (2019) revealed in a research about decision-making in international

advertising that despite existing literature arguing that advertisements are gradually being

localised rather than sticking to the multinational’s standards, the practise on the ground is

different. Although localising advertisements give multinational brands the power of being


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culturally sensitive, Kanso and Nelson (2019) discovered advertising practitioners are only

influenced by culture when it comes to the creative message while other parts of the strategy

are left to international standards. Then again, the creation of regional headquarters

decentralises a number of decisions taken by multinational brands including advertising

campaigns. This procedure puts in a bit of adaptation into the campaign because advertising

directives may come from a much closer administrative level.

Hatzithomas, Fotiadis, and Coudounaris (2016) in their study of Vodafone’s social

media communication in the United Kingdom and Greece concluded that the decision of

multinational brands to either standardise or localise their advertisements which has gone on

for the past five decades can be resolved with four new strategies. The researchers posit that

multinational brands must personalise their social media communication using “global, glocal,

local, or single case strategy” (Hatzithomas et al., 2016, pp. 1104).

The global strategy dates back to a 1983 Harvard Business Review article authored by

Theodore Levitt entitled “Globalization of Markets.” In the article, Levitt (1983) introduces a

market where there is uniformity in products and services worldwide, as consumers were

moving to a “convergence of tastes.” However, globalisation did not address matters

concerning economic differences, as well as the socio-cultural setting of the markets, leading

to a shift from “global” to “glocal” (Grigorescu & Zaif, 2017). Grigorescu and Zaif (2017),

assert “glocalisation” emerged from Japanese scholarship with import given to incorporation

of both global and local market structures. “Glocalisation” encourages a global offering with

consideration to local issues related to the offer. Dumitrescu and Vinerean (2010) define local

strategy as “thinking locally, acting locally” (Dumitrescu and Vinerean, 2010, p. 149). This

definition shows that the local strategy confines itself to existing protocols and culture of a

specific market. Finally, single case strategy takes creativity at a local level while executing

with international standards (Wei & Jiang, 2005; Hatzithomas et al., 2016). However, for social


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media strategy, Berthon, Pitt, Plangger and Shapiro (2012) believe that power is transferred

from multinational brands to the consumers’ hands, making standardisation hard.

The literature reviewed in this section recommends classical four strategies for

multinational brand advertising: global, ‘glocal’, local and single case. The reviewed also

introduces as a fifth strategy which is personalising the four classical strategies. The gap in

literature however, is how multinational brands and their local subsidiaries execute these

strategies. Coca-Cola is a popular multinational brand and as such research should be done on

how such powerful brands execute their advertising.

The next section discusses how social media plays a role in multinational brand

advertising.

2.2.2 Social Media in Multinational Brand Advertising

Okazaki and Taylor (2013) in their study on social media and international advertising

found three “key theoretical perspectives,” namely, “networking capability, image

transferability, and personal extensibility” (Okazaki & Taylor, 2013, pp. 59-67) that give a

relatively better understanding of social media as well as the potential of value creation with

social media in the context of international advertising.

Network capability, in creating value with social media, is the ability of social media to

transfer information from one point to another, surpassing geographical and cultural limitations

while maintaining its social networking (Okazaki & Taylor, 2013, pp. 59-61). The network

capability perspective helps multinational brands implement standardization across all markets.

Social media makes it ideal for multinational brands to implement network capability as a

brand’s Twitter post sent from one country carries the same message to recipients globally in

real time.

Furthermore, the image transferability perspective, according to Okazaki and Taylor

(2013), posits that through social media, advertisers can build their brand with a bigger market.


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The advertisers can reinforce the image of their brands globally with their customers, because

social media allows mass communication from brand to consumers. Enforcement of brand

image can be done through the use of famous celebrities who can advertise the brand to make

the brand go viral.

Finally, the personal extensibility perspective explains how social media has added

flexibility to communication. Leveraging social media’s ability of feedback mechanism,

Okazaki and Taylor (2013) suggest multinational brands can take advantage of consumers’

desire to interact with the brand to get feedback from the consumers through social media.

Consumers are able to interact with brands at any time, or place regardless of their culture.

The literature reviewed above shows how social media is useful to multinational brands,

however the key theories reviewed are all biased towards standardisation of multinational brand

advertisements. This reveals a gap for the need to expand the three theoretical perspectives to

include localisation, glocalisation and single case strategizing of advertisements. However,

other studies such as Kaur (2008) also encourage the use of social media in multinational brand

literature.

Kaur (2008) in studying why some brands use social media to advertise in the Irish

footwear industry discovered that brands that do social media advertising mostly do it because

target customers spend most of their time on social media. The study further revealed that social

media is a cost effective platform for advertising. Related studies such as Ayivor (2015) asserts

that social media helps brands to direct traffic to their actual websites. This attribute of social

media makes it easier to bring the consumer directly to what the brands have to offer beyond

what is seen on social media.

Kaur (2008) also deduces that social media are user-friendly to brands; thus handlers of

social media accounts for brands can easily navigate through, as compared to traditional

advertising which requires some level of experience. According to Kaur (2008), social media

are convenient and easier to make edits as compared to traditional media advertising. The study


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found that more online advertising was done in the footwear industry than billboards however,

Majeed and Sriram (2019) refuted the claim.

Majeed and Sriram (2019) found in their research that Indian footwear companies still

had majority of their ads on traditional media. Therefore, Majeed and Sriram (2019) rejected

Kaur’s (2008) findings that suggested that the brands that do social media advertising mostly

do it because target customers spend most of their time on social media. Majeed and Sriram

(2019) argued that findings in Kaur (2008) may work for Ireland but cannot be generalised.

Although Ireland may have a vibrant social media usage, India, according to Majeed and Sriram

(2019), still has television as a dominant medium and is only gradually warming up to social

media. For the purpose of this study, Twitter advertising by multinational brands and their local

subsidiary: a study of Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Ghana, the reach of social media is on the high

side, with the proliferation of mobile phone usage (Kemp, 2019).

In the case of Ghana, a number of traditional media (television and radio stations) in

addition to their conventional services have introduced online streaming of their content in

order to reach their target who have moved away from traditional media to social media.

Social media such as Facebook live, Instagram live, and Periscope/Twitter live video are

engaged to broadcast traditional media content online. Kemp’s 2019 digital report revealed

that, as of January 2019, the mobile phone usage in Ghana was 130% as juxtaposed to the total

population of Ghana (Dubras, Nazir, & Oxford, 2019).

Literature reviewed in this section gives a perspective on social media usage in

multinational branding. Some researchers (Kaur, 2008; Okazaki & Taylor, 2013; Ayivor,

2015) proved social media’s utility to multinational branding with the tenets of convenience,

user-friendliness, as well as popularity worldwide, nevertheless Majid and Sriram 2019

subjected popularity to differ from region to region. However, the reviewed literature in this

section lacks instances of local subsidiaries. The next section discusses how brands like Coca-


16

Cola engage on social media, taking a cue from Kaplan and Haelin (2010) challenges and

opportunities social media present.

2.2.3 Brand Engagement on Social Media

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) recommend that if a brand still needs time to operate its

core mandate, the business entity cannot participate in all social media because there are a

whole lot of social media platforms, hence the need to carefully choose the specific media that

suit advertising needs of a brand. A specific target will have a medium that gratifies that target’s

communication needs, making it easy for brands to reach them. For instance, social media users

who are interested in video contents may often visit YouTube and thus will be available to

receive advertising that comes in video forms. In the same light, photo advertisements may be

more suitable on social medial sites like Instagram for target audiences that pay attention to

photo content on social media.

Whiting and Williams (2013) in a study to understand uses and gratifications that

consumers get from social media discovered ten themes that are uses and gratifications of social

media, which had been articulated in earlier works by Palmgreen and Rayburm (1975),

Korgaonkar and Wolin (1999), Papacharissi and Rubin (2000) and Ko, Cho and Roberts (2005).

The themes found were, “social interaction, information seeking, pass time, entertainment,

relaxation, communicatory utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion, information

sharing, and surveillance or knowledge about others,” (Whiting & Williams 2013). Conversely,

in a quantitative approach by Rohm, Kaltcheva, and Milne (2013) in finding which needs

brands can gratify consumers, respondents revealed that consumers of brands go on social

media to gratify the need for entertainment, engagement, information, and promotions and

other incentives.

The review of literature brought to light themes of multinational brand advertising,

social media in multinational brand advertising and brand engagement on social media.

Multinational brand advertising theme revealed that advertising for multinationals brands and


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local subsidiaries open a discussion on whether multinational brands should stick to a

standardised strategy or localise the strategy to suit the subsidiary. Secondly, the theme of social

media in multinational brand advertising engaged literature that discovered merits of social

media for multinational brands when advertising. Social media offers a new dimension to

advertising due to features such as the ability to surpass geographical barriers while maintaining

messaging strategy put in place by the brand. Social media further leverages human’s desire to

communicate to thrive, thus consumers are able to give feedback to multinational brands

through social media. Finally, on the theme of brand engagement on social media, literature

articulates that social media gratifies consumers’ media needs. Therefore, multinational brands

can engage consumers by satisfying the consumer’s needs. Based on this knowledge, brands

understand what consumers use social media for, yet there is ample evidence that Coco-Cola

Ghana, for example, uses Twitter to advertise and communicate with stakeholders. What we

do not know is how the company’s communication behaviour meets the needs of its

stakeholders. This study is being embarked upon to find an answer to this question.

2.3 Theoretical Framework

This study is underpinned by the uses and gratifications theory propounded by Katz and

Blumler in 1970s. The theory is audience-centered, as such, it can be used by brands to

understand why audiences actively seek specific media to satisfy their exact needs.

2.3.1 Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT)

Uses and gratifications theory (UGT) is an audience-centred theory propounded by Katz

and Blumler in the 1970s. The theory focuses on what people do with media, rather than what

media does to people. UGT seeks to understand why people seek out media and what they use

them for. McQuail, Blumler, and Brown (1972) proposed four uses of media as “diversion,

personal relationships, personal identity, and surveillance” (McQuail, Blumler, and Brown,

1972, pp. 512-513)


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The main tenets of the theory are, first, the audience are assumed to be active with a

goal-oriented media use. Secondly, the initiative in linking need gratification to a specific

medium choice rests with the audience member. Further, the media compete with other

resources to satisfy needs. The theory posits that people have enough self-awareness of their

media use, interests, and motives to help researchers get a vivid description of that use. Also,

value judgments of media content can only be assessed by audiences. In addition, the media

compete against each other as sources of gratification as well as satisfy the needs of the

audiences (West & Turner, 2007). These needs that audiences use media to gratify include their

quest to be informed or educated, entertained, interact, relate to characters of the situation in a

media environment or escape from real life’s daily stresses (McQuail, 2010).

UGT, according to David (2016), has more significance now more than ever, especially

when it comes to explaining how consumers interact with technology, prominent of which is

the internet. Studies into mobile phone usage regarding uses and gratifications theory have

revealed that consumers seek gratifications from their mobile phones. Implicit in this finding

is the assumption that social media usage can be motivated by such reasons as the need to vent

feelings, the need for recognition and other cognitive needs (Leung, 2013). With such power

in the hands of the consumer, this research seeks to find out how brands engage their consumers

on Twitter to satisfy their needs. Multinational brands as consumers of social media in this

research will be investigated to find how they use social media to gratify communications

needs.

2.3.2 Uses and gratification in this study

This study, which seeks to investigate Twitter advertising of Coca-Cola employs uses

and gratification theory. Traditionally, the theory is viewed from the audiences’ point of view,

however, content producers (in this case Coca-Cola) can take advantage of the existing

knowledge of gratifications sought by audiences to satisfy the audiences. Leung (2013) puts


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social media gratifications into five categories namely; social purposes and seeking affection,

the need to vent feelings, the need to be recognised, to be entertained, and finally other

cognitive uses.

Isba, Woolfe, & Hanneman (2016) acknowledge humans as social beings with a

motivation to belong, through establishing and keeping interpersonal relationships. As such,

social media presents a front for audiences to relate to other users. The users here may be

persons or brands providing social relations to other accounts. All accounts on social media

form the ecosystem in which users can use to relate to each other. Multinational brands can

take advantage of this ecosystem to provide social relations with clients, hence gratifying their

existing need to socialise.

Social media users according to Leung (2013) gratify their need to vent through social

media. The feedback mechanism incorporated into most social media platforms makes it

possible for multinational brands to gratify the audiences’ need to vent. To motivate the use of

the brand, multinational brands gratify their audiences giving an attentive ear to the audiences.

Using social media to gratify the need to be recognised, Gangi & Wasko (2016)

acknowledge this need when some of the subjects in their study felt involved in the

multinational brand Facebook’s processes. Facebook invited users to vote in polls to select a

new look and feel of the social networking site. A number of participants felt important being

recognised to take a decision on behalf of the brand. Facebook at that instant gratified the need

of the users, assuring them of a level of loyalty.

Multinational brands can also take advantage of social media to entertain audiences.

Bartsch & Viehoff (2010) regard entertainment as essential motivation for media usage.

Entertainment varies in forms, making convergent media such as social media suitable to host

it. As an already existing hub for entertainment, multinational brands can put their content on

social media to gratify their audiences.


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The internet over the years have proven itself as a body of knowledge through countless

entries by diverse users. Social media allows users to upload content for other users to see, as

such, cognitive needs are gratified. Maslow (1981) puts cognitive needs as knowledge and

understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning and predictability. Social media has

become a one-stop shop for satisfying curiosity, users go on to various platforms online to

explore and understand happenings. Multinational brands can take advantage of this need to

gratify curious audiences with explanations and meanings.

From the above, uses and gratification theory stands as a theory that can be used to

predict what multinational brands can do on social media for their clientele.

2.4 Chapter Summary

This chapter has reviewed literature and has identified the following as key themes that

frame the scholarship, multinational brand advertising, social media in multinational brand

advertising, and brand engagement on social media. These themes provided an understanding

of what exists in literature, therefore, this research seeks to fill the gap of Twitter advertising

by Coca-Cola, a multinational brand and its local subsidiary. Following the review of literature,

the chapter examined the uses and gratifications theory as the theory that guided the study. The

theory articulated how multinational brands can use social media to gratify the needs of

consumers.

The following chapter discusses the approaches and techniques used to conduct this

study.


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CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This chapter explains the methodology used in this study as well as how the population

and sample were arrived at. As mentioned in previous chapters, the research is a study of the

Twitter advertising of the multinational brand Coca-Cola and its Ghanaian subsidiary. It is

underpinned by the uses and gratifications theory (Katz et al, 1974). The study employed a

qualitative research approach to investigate how Coca-Cola uses Twitter for advertising.

McKenna, Myers, and Newman (2017) recommend the use of qualitative method for studies

that use social media as primary data.

First, the structure of the research is explained in the research design subsection. The

next subsection describes the population and setting of the study. The subsection following the

population and setting discusses how the sample was arrived at, revealing the unit of analysis.

Finally, the method of analysis is explained.

3.2 Research Design

This study adopted the qualitative research approach, which is used for non-measurable

data. In order to assess the use of Twitter as an advertising platform for multinational brands

and to explain how Coca-Cola uses social media as an advertising medium, content were

retrieved from the (relevant) Twitter pages and typed out into a text document.

The tweets gathered this study were obtained from Twitter in June 2019 through the

help of Hootsuite, a social media marketing and management service. The tweets were selected

from the year 2009, the year Coca-Cola opened a Twitter account, to 2018, the year before this

study begun. Twenty tweets were conveniently sampled from the multinational account of

Coca-Cola (@cocacola) and the Ghanaian subsidiary (@cocacola_GH). This reason is due to


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the readily available data on the Twitter pages. The tweets were written in text, defining emoji

and describing media elements where available. The texts were put in a word processing

document.

3.3 Setting and Population

Coca-Cola’s popularity worldwide and its reputation as the world’s best soda make it

an interesting brand to use for this research. Raj (2016) noted that as far back as 1985, CocaCola

pulled a marketing wonder by being the first soda to be consumed outside the planet earth.

Coca-Cola, using its messaging through integrated market communications, has been

associated to gratify thirst (Dudovskiy, 2015).

The setting for this study is the Twitter pages of Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Ghana.

Compared to other social media platform Coca-Cola uses, Twitter has a media-sharing ability

with restricted text input of 280 characters. The limited number of characters make Twitter an

interesting choice to use for advertising, as it can limit free expression but at the same time is

reliable for quick reads. Twitter posts by @cocacola and @cocacola_GH form the population

of the study. @cocacola is the official Twitter handle of the multinational brand Coca-Cola.

@cocacola_GH is the official Twitter handle for the Coca-Cola subsidiary in Ghana. This

research uses Ghana as the local subsidiary because of proximity of the researcher. The choice

of Ghana helps in the analyses of the contents in case there are cultural or linguistic expressions

that require decoding, the researcher being a native of Ghana can note and decipher.

This research takes a slightly different approach in studying Twitter advertising by

Coca-Cola. Advertisements come in different forms on Twitter. Advertisements may be

targeted adverts, which employ algorithms that monitor users’ demographics, psychographics,

and online behaviour to advertise suitable products for the user (Jansen, Moore, & Carman,

2013). Advertisements may also come in the form of simple tweets that carry out the messaging

the account owner wants to convey. For the purpose of this study, targeted adverts have been


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eliminated to be able to look specifically at the offerings that Coca-Cola wants to position in

the minds of the audience without the influence of the consumer’s bio data. This study is

focused on posts generated on the pages of @cocacola and @cocacola_GH.

3.4 Sampling

As a qualitative study, Babbie (2012) recommends a non-probability sampling

approach. This sampling method fits the study because the study works with data that do not

use statistics. The method for sampling used in the study is convenience sampling. Wimmer

and Dominick (2011) recommend the use of convenience sampling where data is easily

accessible.

In this study, twenty posts on the pages of Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Ghana were

conveniently sampled. This process was facilitated by recommendations from social media

management site Hootsuite. Through Hootsuites, tweets from @cocacola and @cocacola_GH

were derived from the first tweet each page posted to the last tweet of the year 2018. The units

of analysis for the study are all the individual tweets from @cocacola and @cocacola_GH

which have been converted to text format.

3.5 Data Collection

The data used in this study are primary data derived from the Twitter pages of Coca-

Cola and its Ghanaian subsidiary. Hsei and Shannon (2005) explain three approaches to content

analysis namely, “conventional, directed, and summative content analyses.” Conventional

content analysis allows the researchers to immerse themselves in the data allowing new insights

to materialise from the data (Hsei & Shannon, 2005). The directed approach to content analysis

allows researchers to use predetermined codes from existing theories or previous literature

(Hsei and Shannon, 2005). Finally, summative content analysis identifies some words or a


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specific content in text with the intention of understanding the context in which the word is

used.

For the purpose of this study, the conventional approach was used. The data was read

through several times to highlight initial codes in the data. The initial codes which reflected

similar concepts were put together to form themes. These themes were used to draw a coding

guide where the themes were defined with subcategories stated. The themes observed were as

followed: pop culture, sports, festivities, consumer interactivity, and promotions and web

traffic.

3.6 Coding Technique

The contents of tweets were categorised with a coding guide based on, pop culture,

sports, festivities, consumer interactivity, and promotions and web traffic. With these

categories, tweets were coded under a category definition that had been documented in the

guide.

3.6.1 Pop culture

Pop culture was defined with posts that denote germane concepts in society at the given

time (Storey, 2015). Pop culture: television, film, radio, music, entertainment, celebrities,

fashion, and art.

3.6.2 Sports

Sports, in this study referred to sporting and allied activities. The codes that guided the

theme were: football, games, quizzes, and matches.

3.6.3 Festivities

Festivities as a theme was defined surrounding holidays and commemorative days, the

codes were Christmas, Easter, Eid, Festivals, Independence Day, and weekend.


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3.6.4 Consumer interactivity

Consumer interactivity was defined with consumers’ involvement in the brand’s

conversation. Such data were coded with trivia, feedback, complains, enquiry, request, and

polls.

3.6.5 Promotions and web traffic

The theme of promotions and web traffic was defined with announcements, web links,

promo, raffle, offerings presented to consumers including links leading to other platforms

owned by the brand, and commercials.

3.7 Data Analysis

The data collected in the study are analysed thematically. Thematic analysis is a method

for systematically identifying, organising, and offering into patterns of themes across a data set

(Braun and Clarke, 2012). Considering the nature of tweets and their ability to contain text,

image, video, and web links, qualitative content analysis was ideal, because it seeks to derive

meanings from posts. The analysed themes are presented in a narrative form with meanings

drawn to answer the research questions of the study.

3.8 Chapter Summary

The chapter explained why the research used Coca-Cola to study Twitter advertising.

Coca-Cola was purposively chosen as the brand to study because it has stayed relevant for years

with a good track record of marketing. Coca-Cola’s Twitter was also chosen as the social media

for the study because Twitter allows quick reads for users. This research is qualitative in nature,

using content analysis as its methodological approach and analysed thematically.


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CHAPTER FOUR

PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Overview

This chapter presents findings from the research conducted on Twitter advertising by

Coca-Cola Company Limited and Coca-Cola Ghana Limited from March 2009 to June 2018.

While Twitter advertising has been researched by a number of scholars in Europe, Asia and the

Americas, there is not much scholarship on the subject in the African context.

The data for this study were obtained from Twitter pages of Coca-Cola Company

Limited from March 2009 to June 2018 and Coca-Cola Ghana Limited from March 2015 to

June 2018. This study answers the following research questions: how Coca-Cola uses social

media for advertising and communications, the similarities and differences in the Twitter

advertisements of Coca-Cola Company global and in Ghana, what ways Coca-Cola’s Twitter

advertising affect the advertisement of the local subsidiary, and how Coca-Cola engages

consumers on Twitter.

This chapter is divided into two major parts. The first part (4.2) describes the findings

of the research, under which the findings in relation to the theory and literature reviewed in

earlier Chapter two. The second part (4.3), discusses key findings from section 4.2. The

discussions are based on the research questions of the study.

The following section discusses the findings from the data collection and analyses carried out

in chapter three.


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4.2 Findings

After analysing the twenty posts from @cocacola and @cocacola_GH within the five

themes, it can be noted that both Coca-Cola Twitter accounts advertised and communicated in

text and image formats like photos, gifs and videos. Nonetheless, format in which the tweets

were posted, had text captions. The themes analysed: pop culture, sports, festivities, consumer

interactivity, and promotions and web traffic will be discussed in subsequent sections.

4.2.1 Pop Culture

Pop culture, or popular culture is defined by Storey (2018), as culture that is widely

favoured. Pop culture influences the lives of people in a society. In this study, pop culture was

observed through codes such as television, film, radio, music, art, celebrities, fashion and

entertainment. Popular culture themes that reflected in the data analysed showed that CocaCola

stayed up-to-date with trending pop culture. @cocacola tweeted a photo of a limited edition

Coca-Cola drink named ‘New Coke’ which had previously been on sale in April

1985. ‘New Coke’ had been rejected by consumers in 1985, forcing the company to go back to

the old formula within three months (Coca-Cola, 2019). To commemorate the supposedly

failed project, Coca-Cola in 2019 gave consumers a chance to relive history. The Coca-Cola

Company posted that the ‘New Coke’ will be launched again for a limited promotional period

in the season three premiere of a television show set in the summer of 1985 entitled Stranger

Things. This inclusion of television shows to market Coca-Cola is part of pop culture, as it

greatly impacts the daily lives of people in a particular society. The tweet, posted on May 29,

2019 said, “#Enjoy the retro flavor formula in a #LimitedEdition can! #StrangerThings3

#GiftWithPurchase”

Coca-Cola alongside other brands belonging to the Coca-Cola Company (such as Sprite

and Dasani) also joined in celebrating pop culture by tweeting that limited bottles of the drinks

had been customised for American movie franchise, Star Wars.


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Pop culture tweets posted by the Ghanaian subsidiary of CocaCola, @cocacola_GH

which fell under the pop culture ranged from videos or photos of musical artistes performing

to question and answer sessions with celebrities. Popular Ghanaian musician Stonebwoy was

introduced on November 4, 2016 in a tweet as a celebrity guest to answer fans’ questions using

the @cocacola_GH account the following day. Also, Coke Studio Africa, which is a music

programme run by the Coca-Cola Company, was promoted via tweets. In a tweet posted by

@cocacola_GH on December 19, 2016, there was a video of renowned Nigerian musician

2Baba.

Both @cocacola and @cocacola_GH tweeted the phrase ‘share a coke’ a number of

times. This viral phrase was to promote Coca-Cola by asking people to go out to buy CocaCola

which had common first names printed on the bottles.

The analysis of tweets under the pop culture theme revealed that both Coca-Cola and

the Ghanaian subsidiary tailored tweets to fulfil the gratification consumers sought through pop

culture. From the coding guide, entertainment is one of the anchor examples used to develop

the theme of pop culture. The theme therefore shows a level of consistency with

Rohm, Kaltcheva, and Milne’s (2013) as well as Whiting and Williams’ claim that one of the

gratifications consumers seek on social media is entertainment.

The next section discusses the second theme, sports, with regard to the findings of this

study and the uses and gratifications theory.

4.2.2 Sports

The theme of sports was read in the study through codes such as football, games,

quizzes and trivia. In the years 2014 and 2018, the FIFA World Cup took place in Brazil and

Russia respectively. The World Cup was touted in some tweets by @cocacola and

@cocacola_GH. Photos and other graphics, which were tweeted to promote the World Cup

usually had the Coca-Cola logo and tagline, Taste the Feeling’.

A number of Ghanaian football fans are big supporters of the English Premier League.


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Coca-Cola Ghana leveraged that to engage football fans. Consumers were asked by

@cocacola_GH to predict winners, answer trivia questions for Coca-Cola EPL branded

souvenirs and partake in contests like looking out for prizes beneath the crown corks of Coca-

Cola bottles. A sample tweet is @cocacola_GH ‘s post on May 22, 2019 that said: “How good

is your math? First five people to solve this win awesome EPL branded items from

Coca-Cola. Post your answer with the hashtag #MatchDeyCokeDey.” Winners of the grand

prize were also announced through a tweet on June 7, 2019 accompanied with a photo of a list

with the winners’ names. The tweet said: “Football never ends, but our EPL does! Thanks to

everyone for enjoying the games with Coca-Cola! And cheers to the winners heading to the

UK to watch next season's EPL with us.” The hashtags #matchdey #cokedey were also used to

emphasise that the EPL games go hand in hand with drinking Coca-Cola.

The sports themes in the study can be associated to McQuail’s (2010) assertion that audiences

relate to characters of a situation in a media environment to escape from real life and stress

(McQuail, 2010). In the case of this study, consumers immersed themselves in football banter

with Coca-Cola, as well as battle against one another to win prices from CocaCola.

Section 4.2.3 reveals the findings related to festivities, as well as the relation with uses and

gratification theory.

4.2.3 Festivities

The theme of festivities includes posts pertaining to holidays and commemorative days.

The category had the following codes: Christmas, Easter, Eid, festivals, Independence

Day, and weekends. Festivities such as Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and

Independence Day, among others are celebrated on the Twitter pages. @cocacola, being the

account for Coca-Cola worldwide wished a number of countries including their headquarters

the United States of America a happy Independence Day. Coca-Cola, towards the end of the

year 2018, used tweets to outdoor its Christmas packaging with hashtags like #BeSanta to

promote generosity in the season. This generosity was brand-specific; sharing Coca-Cola. On


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Valentine’s Day 2015, @cocacola tweeted about a discount using an Akan slang, dominantly

heard in Ghana, where @cocacola_GH operates. The tweet read: “Guys 'Ya te so' so no

swerving the ladies this Vals Day. Buy a bottle of Coke & say Happy Valentine Day with love.”

The phrase “Ya te so” means prices have been reduced. This trend seems to be quite common

as @cocacola also had some tweets in Arabic, Russian, Spanish and others.

Festivities connotes feasting, happiness, relaxation, holidaying and joy among others

which are feelings associated with Christmas, Easter, Eids, festivals, Independence Day,

weekends and other festive days like Valentine’s. Therefore, Whiting and Williams’ (2013)

themes from uses and gratification (pass time, relaxation, entertainment) fits in this category.

From the tweets reviewed, Coca-Cola used consumers’ sentiments of festivities to gratify

consumers through festive greetings and offerings.

In the next section, consumer interactivity with Coca-Cola’s tweets will be discussed

and linked to how uses and gratifications plays a role in the finding.

4.2.4 Consumer interactivity

Consumer involvement in brand’s conversation had the following codes: trivia,

feedback, query, polls. These codes formed the category consumer interactivity where

@cocacola and @cocacola_GH tweeted questions and other statements that encouraged

feedback from consumers including polls, trivia. Examples of such an enquiry include a time

(August 3, 2018). @cocacola pitched a business idea to the public to vote on: “New business

idea #TheGreatDebate #PeanutsandCocaCola Peanuts in Coke, awesome! Just Cherry or

Vanilla Peanuts on the side! Ice-cold is all I need”

This poll gave the audience a chance to vote on the new business idea, which resulted

in “Ice-cold is all I need” option winning with 52% with “Just Cherry or Vanilla” following

at 27%. “Peanuts in Coke, awesome!” and “Peanuts on the side!” followed with 11% and

9% respectively. Some other tweets gave followers tasks to fulfil after which winners were

rewarded by Coca-Cola. Twitter accounts of both Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Ghana were used


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to directly respond to Coca-Cola related inquiries. The data analysed revealed Coca-Cola

responded to the complaints of consumers by treating the complaint in private (direct message).

Twitter accounts therefore serve as customer service points.

Leung (2013) asserts that people use social media to vent feelings. If a brand needs

comments concerning operations, the brand may as well setup a feedback mechanism.

CocaCola allows consumers to tweet at the company, thereby gratifying several needs. Some

of the needs may be the need to vent, or the need to interact (Whiting and Williams, 2013).

The final theme, promotions and web traffic will be discussed in the next section, with

regard to uses and gratifications theory.

4.2.5 Promotions and Web traffic

Promotions and web traffic theme emerged in this study after the preliminary test of the

themes in the coding guide. Codes such as announcement, web links, promo, raffles, and

commercials were observed. The theme of promotion and web traffic dealt with tweet which

presented offerings to consumers and links leading to other platforms owned by the brand.

Both Twitter accounts of Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Ghana direct traffic to related

pages or websites with web links in tweets. This ability gives network capability in creating

the value with social media, as Okazaki and Taylor (2030), and Ayivor (2015) discussed.

Ayivor (2015) noted in her study that social media helps brands to direct traffic to their actual

websites where products and other services are promoted. An example is an April 11, 2016

tweet from @cocacola_GH,

“Join @africashowboy and us put together all the great Ghanaian moments

#TasteTheFeeling youtu.be/qJK_n0eypoI”

This post has a link directed to Coca-Cola Company’s YouTube page to watch another

advertisement.

Coca-Cola uses Twitter to promote the brand. Announcements are made by CocaCola

via Twitter, keeping the audiences informed. One notable theme that run through uses and


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gratification literature engaged for this study was information. Scholarly works from far back

as Katz and Blumler (1974) to date assert consumers seek media to gratify needs.

The following section discusses the key findings paramount to the objectives of the

study.

4.3 Discussion of Key Findings

This section discusses key findings of this study. The discussions have been group based on

the research questions of the study.

4.3.1 How does Coca-Cola use Twitter for advertising and communication?

The first research question from the study sought to find out how Coca-Cola use Twitter

for advertising and communication. From the findings of the research, it was revealed that

Twitter helped Coca-Cola stay in touch with the target market. This form of contact works

regardless of time and day, as consumers can engage Coca-Cola’s Twitter handles anytime and

vice versa. Communication done through Twitter by Coca-Cola also reaches target wherever

they are through a variety of device, be it mobile phones, tablets or computers, unlike traditional

media which has a device for each medium. This form of connectivity is a practical example

of Okasaki and Taylor’s (2013) network capability theory of social media. From the data

analysed in this study, an example of number of tweets sent from @cocacola_GH were sent

after regular working hours of the company.

In answering the question of how Coca-Cola uses Twitter for advertising and

communication, data from the study show a number of ways which have been put under two

classes, delivery and purpose. In terms of delivery, Coca-Cola used Twitter with all of Twitter’s

delivery routes, that is, text, graphic interchangeable format (GIF), hyperlinks, images, and

videos to advertise and communicate with consumers. With these five formats, a matrix of

combinations of how Coca-Cola use Twitter to advertise and communicate can be explored.


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The text-based messaging used text characters to communicate. These include letters, numbers,

symbols and emoji. Text and media-based messaging had text supported with images, graphic

interchangeable formats (GIFs) and videos. Text and hyperlink-based messaging employed the

use of text and web links to send messages directing targets to external websites to access

further information. Finally, text, media and hyperlink-based messaging combines all three

formats to send a message. For instance, @cocacola’s tweet in the dataset from June 12, 2014,

had text, an image and a link happinnesflag.com. Other examples from the sample contain text

only, text and GIF, text and video.

Under purpose, it can be deduced from the data analysed that Coca-Cola communicated

by advertising the brand to consumers, responding to enquiries made by consumers and

beginning a conversation. How Coca-Cola is able to use Twitter to communicate and advertise

also stems from the use-friendliness of social media (Kaur, 1008; Okazaki and Taylor, 2013;

Ayivor, 2015) and social media’s ability of feedback mechanism that Okazaki and Taylor,

(2013) theorised as personal extensibility to suggest multinational brands can leverage

consumers’ desire of interaction to interact with consumers.

The next section deals with the similarities and differences in the Twitter advertisements

for Coca-Cola Company Limited and Coca-Cola Ghana Limited.

4.3.2 What are the similarities and differences in the Twitter advertisements for Coca-

Cola Company Limited and Coca-Cola Ghana Limited?

The second research question from the study tried to find out the similarities and

differences in the Twitter advertisements for Coca-Cola Company Limited and Coca-Cola

Ghana Limited. From the data analysed, on one hand, Coca-Cola’s account @cocacola tweeted

chiefly to the American market (where it is headquartered), but at the same time, crafted

messages that that went out to the global market as well. Despite belonging to the bigger Coca-

Cola brand, the Ghanaian (local) subsidiary, @cocacola_GH, on the other hand kept all its


34

messaging local. The farthest @cocacola_GH tweeted was for the African market which was

usually about Coke Studio Africa.

The data analysed show that both Twitter handles @cocacola and @cocacola_GH give

priority to Coca-Cola as the brand being promoted. Both Twitter handles are used to announce

messages, create brand awareness and perform online customer service functions.

On the other hand, the local account @cocacola_GH distinctively posted Ghanaian content as

opposed to the dominating global posts of @cocacola. These manifest similarities and

differences in the Twitter posts give rise to the next question of how the scholarly debate of

standardisation vs. localisation (Schmid & Kotulla, 2011; Wang & Yang, 2011; Hatzithomas

et al., (2016); Matricano & Vitagliano, 2018 and can be practicalised with Coca-Cola. The gap

in literature concerning how multinational brands and their local subsidiaries execute these

strategies seeks to be resolved.

4.3.3 In what ways do Coca-Cola’s Twitter advertising affect the ads of their local

subsidiaries?

Multinational brand advertising literature is split with the debate of on which strategy

works for advertising multinational brands and their local subsidiaries. In other words, what

the best choice is in terms of how the multinational brand affects the subsidiaries’ advertising.

Using Coca-Cola to answer how multinational brands’ Twitter advertising affect the

advertisement of their local subsidiaries, the findings of this study revealed that the tweets of

@cocacola do not necessarily affect advertising and communication of @cocacola_GH. There

was a low level of engagement when @cocacola tweeted in the Akan language with majority

of the likes and retweet from non-Ghanaian Twitter accounts. As of the year data were collected

for this study, which was four years after that particular tweet was posted, @cocacola_GH had

neither liked nor retweeted the post. Other posts by @cocacola targeted at the Ghanaian market

including share a coke bottle with Ghanaian names also saw very low engagements, some

without Ghanaians engaging.


35

Hatzithomas et al., (2016) presented a personalised paradigm which from analysing the

data, Coca-Cola’s Twitter advertising seems to practicalise. The Ghanaian subsidiary posted

items that are relatable to Ghanaian context and from close reading of the data, Coca-Cola

Ghana’s account was not obliged to engage with the multinational twitter account. The

Ghanaian subsidiary can safely be said to have localised their advertisements on Twitter. This

finding confirm Berthon, Pitt, Plangger and Shapiro’s (2012) assertion that multinational

brands find it difficult to standardise social media strategy across.

4.3.4 How does Coca-Cola engage their consumers on Twitter?

Evident from the themes discussed in section 4.2, Coca-Cola engaged its consumers by

gratifying the consumers’ needs via Twitter. The various tweets had corresponded to at least

one theme in the category on the coding guide. In an instance, a tweet from @cocacola that

read, “@stonebwoyb takes over our account tomorrow. With just a tweet you can know all

about his #CokeStudioGH experience. Join the fun!” the words “Stonebwoy,”

“CokeStudioGH” were coded as celebrity, music and entertainment, which fell under the pop

culture theme. “Join the fun,” was also coded as a request which fell under the theme consumer

interactivity. By closely reading the above, it is evident that the post followed the themes of

pop culture and consumer interactivity to gratify the entertainment and information needs of

consumers. This reveals Bartsch & Viehoff (2010) assertion of entertainment being huge

motivation for media usage and gratification true in practice. This finding is consistent with

Okazaki and Taylor (2013) that social media gratifies consumers’ needs.

4.4 Chapter Summary

The findings in this study informs that Coca-Cola engages consumers as well as gratify

the needs of these consumers through Twitter. The outstanding similarity between the

multinational account and the subsidiary account is how both accounts prioritise the brand


36

Coca-Cola over the others (ie. Fanta, Sprite). The major differences between both accounts are

firstly, the targets. The mother company targets the American audience and next global

audience while the Ghanaian subsidiary advertised to mainly the local target.

The findings move issues relating to Coca-Cola advertisements from anecdotal to research-

backed.

This chapter presented data obtained from a content analysis and thematic analysis of

Coca-Cola’s worldwide and Ghana’s Twitter accounts. Data collected were grouped under

themes of pop culture, sports, festivities, consumer interactivity, and promotion and web traffic.

The next chapter takes a look at summary, conclusions, and recommendations of the study.


37

CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Introduction

The study set out to investigate Twitter advertising by multinational brands and their

local subsidiaries, using Coca-Cola. The study content analysed tweets from Coca-Cola’s

Twitter page and Coca-Cola Ghana’s Twitter page through a directed content analysis

approach. Subsequently the study was analysed thematically.

This final chapter begins with a summary of the study, concludes the discussion on the

findings of the study. The subsequent sections focus on the limitations of this study and gives

recommendations for further research. Finally, the chapter ends with a chapter summary.

5.2 Summary of the Study

The study began by taking a look at how multinational brands have gained interest in

new media. The phenomenon has sparked debates in scholars for a long period because of how

local subsidiaries of these brands are affected by the advertisements multinational brands put

on social media. The study used Coca-Cola and its Ghanaian subsidiary to investigate the

matter, with Twitter as the social media to that respect. These research questions were asked to

help meet the objectives of the study, how Coca-Cola uses social media for advertising and

communications, the similarities and differences in the Twitter advertisements of Coca-Cola

Company global and in Ghana, what ways Coca-Cola’s Twitter advertising affect the

advertisement of the local subsidiary, and how Coca-Cola engages consumers on Twitter. The

study employed a qualitative approach, using directed qualitative content analysis as the

method. A coding guide drawn from previous studies by Cox (2010); Pegoraro (2010) and

Ayivor (2015) was used to generate codes and themes.


38

The themes of pop culture, sports, festivities, consumer interactivity, promotions and

web traffic. The frames under pop culture were television, film, radio, music, entertainment,

celebrities, fashion and art. Under the theme of sports, the following frames were coded,

football, games, quizzes and matches. For festivities, the codes were Christmas, Easter, Eid,

Festivals, Independence Day and weekend. Consumer interactivity was coded with trivia,

feedback, complains, enquiry, request and polls. Finally, promotions and web traffic had the

codes of announcement, web links, promo, raffle and commercials.

5.3 Conclusions

Pertaining to the objectives of this study, conclusions were drawn by analysing

implications presented by the key findings of the study. The study revealed that Twitter

performed an important role in advertising and communicating for Coca-Cola. First, the

findings of the study revealed that Coca-Cola uses social media to reach out to their customers

regardless of time of day and location. This implies that multinational brands that use the

standardization strategy in advertising should use social media like Twitter to reach consumers

worldwide.

In addition, the finding of the study indicate Coca-Cola’s Twitter advertising did not conform

to standardisation nor localisation. Coca-Cola’s multinational Twitter account used a

personalised strategy, combining global, local and ‘glocal’ strategies. On the other hand, the

subsidiary account for Ghana used a strictly local approach. These advertising strategies put

together by both parties show a glaring difference between the multinational’s advertising

versus the subsidiary, thus resolving research objective three which looks at the similarities and

differences in the Twitter advertisements for Coca-Cola Company Limited and Coca-Cola

Ghana Limited. As such, the findings imply that for multinational brands to advertise well, the

strategy should be personalised. What fits for one brand may not necessarily fit other brands

(Hatzithomas et al., 2016, pp. 1104). Further, as Okazaki and Taylor (2015) indicated, social


39

media has the ability to gratify media needs of consumers. This study which was underpinned

by the uses and gratifications theory, proved that multinational brands can use consumers’

needs to satisfy the consumer by using already determined needs from the uses and

gratifications theory to satisfy the consumer. The next section discusses the limitations of the

study.

5.4 Limitations of the Study

The research was limited to a single brand in the soft drink industry. As such, findings

and conclusions are based on the brand Coca-Cola. Therefore, the results of this study are

neither representative of the soft drinks industry nor multinational brands. The study is

qualitative; therefore, findings cannot be generalized.

Furthermore, despite having vibrant public communication on Twitter, there was a lack

of views from the Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola to help understand their communicative

behaviours. The direct messaging buttons on both @cocacola and @cocacola_GH were not

responsive enough for interviews on the matter. At the time when interviews were needed,

@cocacola’s DM was closed. The closest account, @CocaColaCo referred questions to the

Africa branch in Nairobi, Kenya. The next section makes recommendations for future studies.

5.5 Recommendations

Based on findings of this study, it is recommended that multinationals consider social

media as part of their advertising strategy. From the first finding of this study, Coca-Cola use

Twitter to advertise without regard for format. The content by virtue of being on social media

is retrievable at any point in time regardless of geographical boundaries.

Moreover, the second finding revealed Coca-Cola as a multinational brand personalised

its advertising strategy on Twitter and has worked well as Coca-Cola stands with a huge

following on Twitter. Multinational brands are as a form of recommendation advised to draw


40

personalised advertising strategy on Twitter, because a standard or local strategy may not fit

perfectly.

The theory of underpinning the study, uses and gratification, offers a number of reasons for

which consumers use social media. The reasons or needs are social purposes and seeking

affection, the need to vent feelings, the need to be recognised, to be entertained, and other

cognitive uses. It is hereby recommended from this study that should a brand need to gratify

media needs of their consumers, social media is a safe bet.

Future studies should look beyond Coca-Cola; other brands can be used to replicate the

study. Better still, multinational brands in Africa could be examined in this light. Studying

African multinational brands would expand literature on African multinational branding.

Future research can be conducted using different methods. The emphasis could be on

one-on-one interviews if there are means to connect with both the multinational brand and their

local subsidiary. A qualitative study can be conducted altogether to bring different perspectives

to the study.

Other social media platforms can be used in subsequent studies. Media sharing

platforms such as Instagram can be used to explore the intricacies of media usage in

multinational and local brand advertising. The next section concludes the study with a

summary.

5.6 Chapter Summary

Innovation brought by Twitter to multinational brands has revolutionised market

communications. Due to this revolution, more multinational brands are creating accounts for

their local subsidiaries. As the brand tries to appeal to its local market, there are a number of

factors the brand must look out for; the nature of engagements of the targets as well the targets’

responsiveness to messaging are all factors to be considered. This research is to begin the


41

conversation on social media usage for market communications of multinational branding in

the global south as the dawn of ‘glocalisation’ advances.

This study has researched Twitter advertising of multinational brands and their local

subsidiaries, using Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola in Ghana. This chapter summarised the study,

drew conclusive discussions on the key findings, and articulated the limitations of the study as

well as recommend for future researchers.


42

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: CODING GUIDE FOR TWEETS

Table 1 Coca-Cola on Twitter: Category Definitions

Pop Culture Posts that refer to popular culture; relevant concepts in society at the given time:

● television

● film

● radio

● music

● entertainment

● celebrities

● fashion

● art

Festivities Posts surrounding holidays and commemorative days

● Christmas

● Easter

● Eid

● festivals

● independence day

● weekend

Sports Posts that refer to sporting and allied activities:

● football

● games

● quizzes

CATEGORY DEFINITION


50

● matches

Consumer Interactivity Consumer involvement in brand’s conversation:

● trivia

● feedback

● complains

● enquiry

● request

● polls

Promotions and Web

Traffic

Posts which presents offerings to consumers including

links leading to other platforms owned by the brand:

● announcement

● web links

● promo

● raffle

● commercials


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