Assigment 4

3.1 What conceptual blocks were experienced by coke executives?

Coca-Cola became very concerned about its future given the fact that Coke, initially, held a

dominant position in the global market with a market share of around 18 percent compared to

PepsiCo’s 4 percent. But Coke’s market share began to erode versus Pepsi; until by the end of the

decades, Coke’s has slipped to 12 percent market share while Pepsi had increased to 11 percent.

Conceptual blocks mean preventing a person from solving problem in critical manner. Some

common types of conceptual blocks are constancy, commitment, compression, complacency.

The ones experienced by coke executives are:

a. Constancy:

It means reusing a solution of a previous problem by maintaining a status quo. In this case, Coke

didn’t look at problems in different way. It kept reusing a solution to a similar previous problem

but did not consider how its competitor, Pepsi was gaining its market share. Failing to incorporate

new strategies by letting go off the old and obsolete ones caused Coke to a huge loss in market

share.

b. Commitment

It means committing oneself to a set of beliefs from past experience work. When Coke’s market

share decreased by 4 just percent, they went for a new product and introduce it to the market.

It seemed that they didn’t think that their original product line was. Introducing New Coke failed

to keep up with the customers’ taste and preference, which in turn caused Coke to lose large

proportion of its market share and revenue, and customers.

c. Compression

This means a tendency to solve a problem quickly and hastily without thinking about

consequences and possible worst case scenarios. Coke’s executives also faced this conceptual

block when they did not investigate and research enough while introducing New Coke. This

caused a huge downturn for Coke and thereby failed it in terms of market share, profits and

revenues. They completely overlooked the most important piece of...