The Marketing Strategy Of Coca-Cola

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During 1985 the Coca-Cola Company would undergo a sea change to their flagship brand thereby altering a formula largely contributing to a remarkable century-old success story. This precipitous transformation was largely prompted in response to the conspicuous erosion of market share to rival Pepsi and potential ramifications associated with the myriad of exclusivity agreements in the restaurant and vending industries that hung in the balance. If the company lost out to their rival, there could be broader implications regarding disposition of those contracts going forward as they appeared increasingly precarious for renewal. There was no question that marketing and sales executives at the company had cause for concern as a recipe change for Coke inevitably would jettison a formula that had remained constant from the beginning and one that had spawned a global enterprise. Furthermore, with Coke now the preeminent brand on the planet, might management have overlooked the powerful brand loyalty and goodwill that it had cultivated for a century? In any event, development of a new formula, one that would be preferred over both present-day Coke and Pepsi would begin in earnest. …show more content…

According to the company, the original inventor was a pharmacist named John Pemberton who never committed the formula to paper thereby choosing to pass it down exclusively by word of mouth. That would all change decades later when a group of investors retained funding to purchase the company and literally collateralized the loan with the secret formula itself. Interesting enough, that original document remained in an Atlanta bank until Coca-Cola moved it in recent years to a specially built vault within the company’s

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