Download If Roberto Goizuetta has asked who is responsible for the new Coke

If Roberto Goizuetta has asked who is responsible for the new Coke disaster, I
would say ‘you are.’ It’s not that I do not understand how he came up with the idea of
changing the taste of original coke that has not been changed since the very foundation
of the corporation. When he and Donald Keough made the decision, the market was
getting more and more competitive than ever before. Not only Pepsi, the biggest
competitor in the market, started to challenge them in flavor, but they also started to
beat Coca-Cola in the challenge. I would say it is natural to think about such idea of
changing the taste.
But the problem here is that when he made the decision, he construed the
problem in a limited sense. The marketing research was too much limitedly focused on
just taste. In other words, the marketing research did not consider intangible factors,
such as reputation, history, culture, and image. For many Americans, Coke is the
emblem of American culture, like hot dogs and baseball, which holds special place in
America’s heart. Coke was a friend that they thought will always be there for them
without changing, not something they can easily erase from their memory. Coke’s
symbolic meaning in people’s heart was more important than just better taste. If the
marketing research looked at the problem more accurately, it would have found
consumers’ emotional attachment to original Coke.
I think it is pretty certain that what tasted better was new Coke, but what people
actually wanted was Coca-Cola Classic. People chose what they think they know is tasty
over what is actually tasty. By completely giving up original coke, Goizuetta and Keough
ignored customers who supported original coke and force them to choose new Coke. If
this company introduced new Coke while still selling original coke as a brand extension
strategy, new coke could have been successful.
As far as what should be done to those responsible, I do not think anything
should be done. If we punish them, it will discourage other employees in the company to
participate in new project. I’m pretty sure that from this big failure experience, Goizuetta
and Keough learned a big lesson about how to make decisions, that decisions should
always be consumer centered.
But overall, I think this new Coke failure was after all a plus in the Coca-Cola
Company. Like what Thomas Edison said, that failure was the mother of today’s success
of Coca-Cola Company. And for consumers, this failure gave them some time to think
about how closely they are emotionally attached to Coca-Cola.