You may read the history of it at your leisure. Blind tastes tests, without brand names, showed that New Coke beat both Pepsi and Coke's classic formula, and they did it with pretty solid statistics, too, from what I have seen.
So, while we could bicker over whether the change was "needed" (that is subjective, not objective - whose needs are we talking about?), it is clear that the taste is what they preferred.
As you said - what they didn't like is the change. The flavor wasn't the issue, the change was the issue. How dare they change Coke?!?
Never mind that Coke had been losing market share in a time when overall soft drink consumption was rising - the public demonstrated with their dollars that they didn't actually want more of the old Coke, but then objected when Coke changed to match their desires!
The fact of the matter is that producing good products and marketing them is not easy or simple.. What the customer wants/needs, what they say they want, and what they will accept/buy can be three different things.
But you are still wrong. New Coke and WotC were using self-selecting surveys. They didn't take proper samples.
Like how those on WotC site starts of will "Do you play 4th edition currently?" You answer no and are met with "Thank you for taking our survey." They discounted anything that might be a reason to see if this person maybe just didn't have a group, was to busy to play right now, they only wanted info form a specific group and targetted that group. The sample size was not random, they targetted with New Coke and 4th edition who they wanted to sample, and assumed that was representative of the whole, and found out they were wrong. Just as you are.
I trusted Coke as I am one that ended up switching to Pepsi because of New Coke. I bought their new product, and drank it, and returned it to the store because it tasted like [insert things not appropriate for the weak of stomach]. It wasn't because it was changed, but because the change itself was bad, and the taste was bad.
For some misguided reason, you sem to be thinking that people dislike change. I admit, you have no right to come in my house and start moving stuff around and can do whatever you want with yours. But when you are selling a product, there must be a reason for the change, thus the other thread...
Again this reason should be based not on keeping some employees job that is supposed to come up with things like new recipes, but in something the consumer would want. The consumer didn't want New Coke, not for just your blinders-on reason, but many just didn't like the taste. You can try to spin it anyway you want to try to blame the consumer for not bowing down to your whims, but I am not some idiot and know I have the right to spend my money where I want to, and you have no right to claim it, unless your product is just that [EXPLETIVE] GOOD!
Which brings us back to trying to force people to accept change for no reason, simply NO.
You want people to accept your product, you don't hold them down and force it down their throat and threaten them in any way to do so, you kiss their butt while actually offering them a decent product.
Many examples I could go into about this, but all the best are political related.
Why did PDF take over for RTF? It wasn't because it was forced on people like the newest version of Windows, but because its performed what people wanted, both cunsomer and company.
Why was there an option for a Playstation/Nintendo controller without the "rumble" feature? Because not everyone wanted it.
If what you are trying to allude to is correct, then their would be no choices in the market for various versions of things and every business would have just one version because they are capable of forcing people to jsut accept any change and thrown their money at it. This does NOT work, and can evidently be seen with the fragmentation of the D&D community where everyone does not jsut buy and play 4th edition, and WotC is not succeeding to be on the top with it as Pathfinder has taken it by storm.
Their tactics and business model (wow there is a thread on that too, how closely related so many recent threads are) failed because it tried to force a needles change on people.
Needless is subjective, YES; and that just shows how your method doesn't work, because each person has a right to make the choices for themselves, rather than live in your world, where they are forced to take what they are given.
Ergo fragmentation based on the subjective tastes of the consumer, some of which are based on how the product is demonstrated and presented to the consumer.
EDIT: Classic Coke's return did not work for me as it wasn't the same (yes I had cleansed my palette before trying it, and since it has never returned to what it was) and I stuck with Pepsi because the changes in the process to make the New Coke formula prevented returning to the original recip and process, and throwing all those changes out would have ruined the company, so their risk and attempt to force a change, cause their loss of customer.
