Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola have always competed against each other. It has been more than a century ago since both brands started fighting to beat the other one and become the most successful one.
This "war" does not only concern the products offered by Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It is bigger than that and includes everything that differentiates the brands, such as the marketing strategy, the brand image, their communication, the pricing strategy etc. This need of differentiation sometimes reverberates itself on the marketing of the brands. Indeed, there always is sort of a clash between Coca and Pepsi in their advertising. We can clearly see this cleavage between the brands, even on the social media with more and more fans for each Fan Page and always more shares about the brands' ads.
Both of these brands are predominant carbonated cola beverages. Their recipe is not that different (People could not often say the difference in taste, even if some people will tell you that Pepsi tastes way better than Coke, or that Coke is "the real" one), this is why both brands need a strategic way to differentiate them from each other.
Pepsi and Coke drinks are not really seen as a beverage anymore, but mostly as entire brands. Until now, Coca-Cola has been more popular but Pepsi is a bigger company. As any company that operates in harsh competitive environments, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and their main competitors as well, have to face the same issue: organizational problems. They also might be scared of the new competitors that offer the same range of products that Coca and Pepsi, at the same price.
[...] This is we could define these five forces for the soft drinks industry. THREATS OF NEW ENTRANTS MEDIUM The entry barriers are not high in this soft drinks industry. The capital needed is low and the consumers might switch pretty easily between various types of soft drinks because the price is not expensive, generally. Usually, the price of the competitors of Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are lower and there are more and more brands entering the market nowadays. However, Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola are not defined by their beverages; they also are characterized as two complete brands, with their own brand image, their strengths and weaknesses. [...]
[...] Therefore, Pepsi is under pressure according to the fluctuation of the American economic, the brand is fragile to the impact of changing economic conditions and the various strikes made by employees. The productivity of the brand is pretty low and slow. It has approximately employees, and the revenue of the brand per each employee is $ which is less than the competitors of the brand. The image has also been tarnished because of the product recall that has been done in 2008. Indeed, we have found salmonella contamination in products such as Aunt Jemima pancakes and waffle mix that have been taken off the shelves. [...]
[...] Strategic management in the soft drinks industry TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Porter competitive analysis 4 Porter analysis of soft drinks industry 4 SWOT 7 Value chains of Coca Cola 11 II. Competitive strategies of Pepsi and Coca-Cola 12 Positioning 12 Communication 12 Pricing strategy 13 Distribution 13 SOURCES 14 THE COLA WARS: PEPSI VS. COCA-COLA Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola have always competed against each other. It has been more than a century ago since both brands started fighting to beat the other one and become the most successful one. [...]
[...] Coca Cola plays on buzz to attract customers, by doing for example events linked with the day of friendship in Argentina. Indeed, there once was an event there, the vending machine was way too high for a normal height person to catch the can, the person needed another one to carry him or her in order to be able to catch the can. It is an outside type of communication and worked really well for the brand. The budget of Pepsi Communication is really high: $ 1.2 billion. [...]
[...] They set a low initial price to attract the biggest number of customers they can, to finally obtain a large market share. The brand does not hesitate to use promotional pricing strategy; the prices of products are sometimes below that usually, to increase short run sales. It gives to the product a sense of urgency and the customer purchases the beverage because it does not cost him a lot. Distribution Coca Cola's distribution network is much larger than Pepsi's. That is why Coke has a competitive advantage on Pepsi. [...]
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