New Coke Vs Pepsi

Dr. John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta created Coca-Cola in 1886. Over the years Coca-Cola Company has turned into the leading brand of sodas in commercial and is positioned number one in carbonated soft drinks and juice drinks. Despite the fact that the Coca-Cola company is strong in the soda market, they still face the competition of Pepsi, which is its a significant rival in the worldwide business sector. This essay seeks to analysis on the invention of the New Coke and how it became the most disastrous blunders in marketing history during the competition of Pepsi and Coca-Cola and evaluating marketing is about much more than the product itself and branding has a significant weight and emotional value in it.

Branding is the way in which the

During 1960’s Coca-Cola market share has been stagnant but the market share of Pepsi turned out to be increasing fast. Pepsi had rebrand as the brand of youth and had received well responses from the consumers. Pepsi was more popular in stores where consumers were given a choice to choose from. While in places like restaurants and clubs, consumers had limitation of decision but to drink Coca-Cola. Later on Pepsi introduced the Pepsi Challenge where the consumers were blinded to taste between Coca-Cola and Pepsi and everyone seems to prefer the taste of Pepsi to Coca-Cola. Since, the market share of Pepsi was increasing fast, Coca-Cola decided to come out with something new. After taking into considerations that the taste was the key factor that led to the success of Pepsi. Therefore, in 1985 Coca-Cola introduced a new product called New Coke replacing the old Coke. After the introduction of New Coke, people started going against the New Coke as many felt that Coca-Cola was considered part of their lives and felt that something was taken away from them. Coca-Cola received more than 40,000 letters of complaint and more than 6,000 calls day by day. The number of people moving from the old Coke to the New Coke was less than the amount they estimated to be. (Hays

Coca-Cola did market research for a period of two years and spent a large amount of funds measure of $4 million to look into the taste of New Coke versus Pepsi and old Coke. After 200,000 blind taste tests, Coca-Cola concluded that individuals favored the taste of New Coke to any other drinks in the market. Therefore, New Coke was introduced with a blast with a whole new packaging and suspending the old Coke. During the press conference of the launch, New Coke was presented however they did not declare about the purpose behind the new launch. Coca-Cola never mention the purposes behind change, Pepsi Challenge and alternate tests done by their innovate work office that demonstrated that the taste of the Coke was the main reason why Coca-Cola was losing to Pepsi in the market share. During the visually impaired taste test, individuals took a taste of the New Coke and favor it for the sweeter taste but in the real world they would buy a can of Coca-Cola and would preferred the less sweet taste of the first Coca-Cola. On top of these, Pepsi even put up advertisements in New York Times and other publications fabricating that Pepsi had won the Cola War and have won because the oversight made by Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola did not react to it because there were pressurized by the results of the New Coke at the point of time. After 87 days of havoc, Coca-Cola regains its popularity and won the battle of Pepsi and became the number one