Assignment: Marketing

Plan Exercise
Andrea Strangis
 The product I am familiar with and I have chosen is the product New Coke and the company

Coca Cola which caused much chaos when they announced this new product. The Coca Cola

Company did not truly consider every option when they decided that they needed change to

compete with the raising competition. If they only had an open mind and saw all of the negative

and positive outlooks of all the marketing research they did, they could have made their company

stronger and less humiliated by Pepsi than they were.

1. Define one specific problem it could address through marketing research.

Coca Cola had the problem that they chose to disregard consumer tests that were more

negative and decided to choose surveys that put the change in the positive light. Coca Cola also

did not realize the dedicated customer base to the original recipe. If they only did the research in

all of the areas they sold them sold Coke they would have realized it was not what the public

wanted. It was a total mis inturpatation of the data to support the roll out of the new recipe. The

Coca Cola Company did not ask the right questions on the survey, nor did they do follow up

questions when a consumer said they would try a new Coke drink. Coca Cola should have

identified all of the consumer groups of interest. Coca Cola was so focuses on selling more soda

then Pepsi they did not take into consideration the fact that they might lose some customers in

the process.

2. What type of research design do you recommend for addressing that problem, and why?

Primary research should have been done. The Coca Cola Company should have done

consumer interviews and realized how consumers would have reacted when they changed the

product they have been using for so many years. Projective techniques could have been used also
to see what the consumer’s true feeling was about coke. I would have recommended Coca Cola

to first do the research and really decide why they need the change? Was it to boost sales over

Pepsi? Was it to change the product to win over the consumer base that prefers Pepsi? Or did

they think they just needed a better product to compete in the market. What they needed was to

keep their customers happy while attracting the younger crowd.

3. What is the most appropriate way to collect the data? Justify your choice.

I believe questionnaires would be an appropriate way to collect data for this decision. This

way Coca Cola Company could have got the opinions of many different people all at once. They

had options of mail questionnaires, telephone interviews, and face to face interviews. All of these

would have got an average size response back but with many different kinds of consumers. Once

they had the answers to the questions they could have followed up on those answers and found

that their customers were happy with the coke they already drink, they did not want their coke

replaced. On the taste test they needed to test the old recipe with the new recipe and document

the findings a little better with follow up questions like “ are you willing to switch” not “ would

you buy it”.

4. How will you ensure high validity, reliability, and representativeness of the data?

The Coca Cola Company had no errors in the data collection process but they had many

problems in the validity section. They were not looking at every way the consumer liked coke,

they were only looking at beating the competion at a taste test. If Coke looked at the consumer’s

behavior and loyalty then they may have looked at a different way to raise their sales. They also
do not look at representative part either. There was not enough data collected from different

areas regions. This was part of the problem underlying the famous New Coke fiasco in the

1980s, in which Coca-Cola underestimated people’s loyalty to its flagship soft drink after

it replaced “Old Coke” with a new, sweeter formula. In a blind taste test, the company assumed

testers’ preferences for one anonymous cola over another was a valid measure of consumers’

preferences for a cola brand. Coca-Cola found out the hard way that measuring taste only is not

the same as measuring people’s deep allegiances to their favorite soft drinks. After all, Coke is a

brand that elicits strong consumer loyalty and is nothing short of a cultural icon. Tampering with

the flavors was like assaulting Mom and apple pie. Sales eventually recovered after the company

brought back the old version as “Coca-Cola Classic.” (Marketing Research: p.124 pp.5)

5. Design an appropriate sampling plan.

Once they have defined the problem or reason why they are in need of a change in recipes

then they need to collect the data. The Coca Cola Company does not want to lose the customers

they have yet they need to win the competitors customers over. They need to focus not only on

their cliental but on Pepsi’s cliental. An appropriate sampling plan would have been a

probability sampling. A random sampling would have been serf ice. They also could have done a

stratified sampling then they may have had enough particisapents to answer the questions of,

would you switch to Coca Cola or would you continue to drink Coca Cola. I believe The Coca

Cola Company used a non probability sampling. They wanted a quick answer in changing the

recipe and decided not to spend the money and time on the proper market researching. They only

looked at the taste test and being better than all the other soda companies rather than the whole

picture.
 References

Coke lore. Retrieved August 7, 2010 from

http://www.thecocaolacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_newcoke.html

Solomon, M., Marshall, G. and Stuart, E. Marketing: Real People Real Choices. Marketing

Research Chapter 4. Retrieved on September 8, 2010.

Wiki. New Coke. Retrieved August 7, 2010 from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke