Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site trwatf.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!trwatf!root From: root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith) Newsgroups: net.misc.coke Subject: Re: "Classic" Coke Message-ID: <1040@trwatf.UUCP> Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 10:00:47 EDT Article-I.D.: trwatf.1040 Posted: Fri Jul 12 10:00:47 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 16-Jul-85 01:47:25 EDT References: <541@hou2g.UUCP> <710@vortex.UUCP> Reply-To: root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith) Organization: TRW Advanced Technology Facility, Merrifield VA. Lines: 45 In article <710@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes: > > The manufacturing costs of the two are exceptionally similar. > The primary push for the availability of the old formula was > extremely poor sales in certain areas of the country, especially, > oddly enough, outside of major metro areas like L.A., N.Y., S.F., etc. > The new formula performed horribly in the South, where it sometimes reportedly > can be difficult to get a Pepsi in some areas if your life depended on > it (remember that Coke world headquarters is in Atlanta). It's only been a month since they introduced the "New Coke." For a large corporation with a global customer base, a mere month sounds like very little time to put together significant sales and marketing statistics. I suspect Coke had it's all of it's bases covered ahead of time... every customer response predicted and every contingency planned for. Somewhat like the war gaming theorists who play out various scenarios of global nuclear conflict so as to prepare ahead of time for responses that are optimal to our side. In this case... the customer is the enemy. Big corporations don't introduce new products on a large scale without making contingency plans. They simply aren't that spontaneous, although they put up a front of being "sincerely surpised at the customer response" and "giving the customer what he wants." > It now becomes something of a waiting game. There are no accurate > long-term sales figures for the new formula, since sales to this point > were driven largely by curiosity and major promotional campaigns/discounts. > Coke will now sit back and see what the local bottlers (who were > screaming for the return of the old formula, since after all the hoopla > their sales were still pretty much flat instead of increasing substantially) > do, and how markets and other vendors partition their sales between > the two similar products. From this data will come the long-term > distribution and pricing decisions. Thus the "Classic Coke" may well remain the number one seller and "New Coke" the second fiddle. -- UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!trwatf!root - Lord Frith ARPA: trwatf!root@SEISMO "Ahhhhhh... the smell of cuprinol and mahogany. It excites me to... acts of passion... acts of... ineptitude."