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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."