Tea and coffee seem to be fine to drink hot or cold, but when I ask you
to think about drinking a soft drink, you’ll probably think of a
refrigerated drink with cold sweat beads running down the sides of a can
or bottle. When taking your first sip, the icy cold fizzy liquid
startles your taste buds and tickles your throat.
But have you ever drunk a warm or even hot soft drink? Just the thought makes me want to opt for water instead.
A few weeks ago, Ian Alwill, the former Executive Director of Group
Marketing and Communications at Nestle Oceania presented a case study in
class for the Contemporary Consumer Insights unit of the Master of Marketing program.
Much earlier in his career he was the Asia Pacific Region Marketing Director for The Seven–Up Company.
The Taiwanese franchisee of the business was complaining that the
formulation of the well-known soft drink 7-Up was too sweet. They felt
that this was dramatically affecting sales of the product in the
country. They were understandably a little hot under the collar … and
said so!!
When he was presented with this dilemma by the franchised bottler he was
quite surprised. Neighbouring Asian countries were happily drinking the
exact formulation with no similar complaints. The global policy was not
to change the formulation of such a well-known product until the market
situation was well understood. His instincts and “gut feel” was that
formulation was not the problem.
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