Cola Wars Summary Essay

As it is stated in the case of Coca-Cola, it was a marketing machine ran by bureaucrats and tried to create an image of their brand more than

     PepsiCo. Incorporated and The Coca-Cola Company are the two largest and oldest archrivals in the carbonated soft drink (CSD) industry. Coca-Cola was invented and first marketed in 1886, followed by Pepsi Cola in 1898. Coca-Cola was named after the coca leaves and kola nuts John Pemberton used to make it, and Pepsi Cola after the beneficial effects its creator, Caleb Bradham, claimed it had on dyspepsia. The rivalry between the soda giants, also known as the "Cola Wars", began in the 1960’s when Coca-Cola's dominance was being increasingly challenged by Pepsi Cola. The competitive environment between the rivals was intense and well-publicized, forcing both companies to continuously establish and

Rivalry: The rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi is extremely high; however, both companies continue to remain profitable. Prior to the 1980s, pricing wars negatively affected profitability for Coca-Cola and Pepsi. After Coca-Cola renegotiated its franchise bottling contract and both companies increased concentrate prices, the rivalry began to focus on differentiation and advertising strategies. Through creative advertising campaigns, such as the “Pepsi Challenge” where Pepsi ran blind taste tests to demonstrate that consumers

Different retailing businesses have very different distribution methods based on the types of product that they sell, some arguably more effectively than others.

The competition between Coke and Pepsi reached its peak to become a real war battle by the year 1980. This war had affected the industry profit for both concentrate producers and bottlers, while the effect of bottlers was much higher. After the successful “Pepsi Challenge” (blind taste tests: sales shot up) in 1974, Coke countered with rebates, retail price cuts and significant concentrate price increases. Pepsi followed of a 15% price increase of its own. During the early 1990’s bottlers of Coke and Pepsi employed low price strategies in the supermarket channel in order to compete with store brands. The concentrate producers were always able to increase their profits by increasing the concentrate price, while the bottlers, especially the

power. While these stores did carry both Coke and Pepsi products, they could negotiate more effectively due

Pepsi’s has a large number of product lines and brands and thus the prices are considerably varied. Their main pricing strategy is based on the Market-Oriented pricing strategy to ensure that its prices are competitive as compared to the competitor’s prices and market conditions. Pepsi also used

The rivalry between coke and Pepsi is legendary and not just only product development and occasionally get personal collusions which sometimes resonate their marketing and promotional activates.

Bottling Network: Both Coke and PepsiCo have franchisee agreements with their existing bottler’s who have rights in a certain geographic area in perpetuity. These agreements prohibit bottler’s from taking on

big market share, such as Pepsi Cola, Mt.Dew, and so on. I like to drink Coke

The Coca-Cola system is not a single entity from a legal or managerial perspective, and the company does not own or control all of their bottling partners. While many view the company as simply "Coca-Cola," their system operates through multiple local channels. The Company manufactures and sells concentrates, beverage bases and syrups to bottling operations, owns the brands and is responsible for consumer brand marketing initiatives. Coca Cola’s bottling partners manufacture, package, merchandise and distribute the final branded beverages to Coca Cola customers and vending partners, who then sell their products to consumers (Wikipedia, 2).

The economics of the concentrate business and bottling is different from each other in terms of number and size of rivals and cost structure etc. Concentrate business has few buyers and through its value chain compare to bottling business has many buyer and mid-way player in the soft drink industry. The concentrate manufacturing process involved a little capital investment in machinery, overhead, or labour to reduce the risks whereas bottlers involving high capital investment. Franchise agreements with soft drink industry allowed bottlers to handle the non-cola brand of other concentrate producers. It also allowed bottlers to choose whether to market new beverages introduced by a concentrate producer. Concentrate producers product cost structure is mostly based on variable costs such as advertising, promotion, market research, and bottler support however, bottler products cost constitution is mostly based on fixed costs and have higher cost leverage. Concentrate producers also took charge of negotiating customer development agreements with nationwide retailers such as Wal-Mart. Concentrate producers collaborated to make more profitable control with bottlers, for example, raw material negotiation with suppliers and sales price

The pricing technique of Coca-Cola has supported the firm to compete and grow in the soft drink effectively. The volume discount and pricing penetration are the vital aspects to provide the firm generates its sales in the market. For instance, Coca-Cola partners with large supply chains such as Costco, Sam’s Club, and Walmart to provide great discount pricing in order to generate its sales substantially in the U.S and the global market. Equally, the firm also distributes its

The change in the consumers' taste is another key trend in the industry. Many substitutes to carbonated soft drinks gained more popularity among consumers. Exhibit 5 shows an increase in the consumption of bottled water from 11.8 in 1998 to 13.2 gallons/capita in 2000, and that of juices from 10 to 10.4 gallons/capita at the expense of

Pepsi decides it price on the basis of competition. The best think about the company Pepsi is that it is very flexible and it can come down with the price very quickly. The company is renowned to bring the price down even up to half if needed. But this risk-taking attitude has also earned Pepsi losses. Though lowering the price would attract the customers but it would not help them cover up the cost incurred in production hence causing them losses. This was the situation earlier but now Pepsi is a full-fledged and growing company. It has covered all its losses and is now growing at a