Coke Zero

COKE Zero

1. Describe the specific type of consumer that the Coca-Cola Company is targeting with each of the following products: Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Diet Coke Plus, Coca-Cola Blak, and Full Throttle Blue Demon. What types of demographic segmentation is each product’s marketing most likely to include?

The Coca-Cola Company segments markets for its products on the basis of demographic information related to customers’ buying and consuming behavior. Common bases of demographic segmentation are age, gender, income, ethnic background, and family life cycle.

DIET COKE: Women who want to lose weight. (Gender segmentation.)

COKE ZERO: Men, 18 to 34, who don’t want the sugar and calories in regular soda but don’t like the taste of artificial sweetener. They consider Diet Coke a “girl’s drink” and themselves too cool to be seen drinking it. (Gender and age segmentation.)

DIET COKE PLUS: Women who want to lose weight and are concerned about health and nutrition. (Gender segmentation.)

COCA-COLA BLAK: Older consumers with more sophisticated tastes that are willing to pay a little more. (Age and income segmentation.)

FULL THROTTLE BLUE DEMON: Young Hispanic men. (Age, gender, and ethnic segmentation.)

2. Some industry analysts think soft-drink companies should develop products that will bring new customers into the market rather than just creating variants on the old. They warn that products like Coke Zero will cannibalize lost market share from other soft drink categories instead of increasing the number of consumers overall. Which Coca-Cola products are most likely to lose customers to Coke Zero?

Coke Zero is most likely to affect sales of Coke and Diet Coke with intra-brand switching. Times have been tough in the soft drink industry after soda sales fell two years in a row in 2005 and 2006. In the future, companies like Coca-Cola will have to consider new ways of attracting customers into the market if they want to see sales increase.

3. Why...