Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?


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This might be a regional thing. I get the impression coke has more cultural power in some places than others. Where I grew up in Boston I remember lots of people drinking coke, I think it was more popular than Pepsi.

My understanding is that while it was an effect seen almost everywhere, the greatest pushback came from the American South.
 

I would be interested in the sources on these numbers so I can see more. I may be out of date or misremembering, but I did a pretty big research paper on the topic when I was in college and I remember most of the consensus in the research was it boiled down to the taste testing issue I mentioned and failing to understand what the customers wanted
[emphasis mine]
DannyA's analysis isn't contradicted by the bolded comment above based on your own research. Many people liked the New Coke and if Coca-Cola had listened to the market, they could have offered consumers both. They kind of did since New Coke was still produced long after Coke Classic was rushed back to the market, but the reach of New Coke from that point was pretty limited.
They also failed to understand the customers' attachment and identification with Coke. And that identity didn't automatically transfer to New Coke, particularly since they were pushing how it wasn't the same old Coke. Customers wanted their Coke-drinker identity to continue as before, not shift to this Pepsi-knockoff drinker that New Coke represented. Again, Coke failed to understand what the customers wanted - or even the power of their own brand identity.
 

[emphasis mine]
DannyA's analysis isn't contradicted by the bolded comment above based on your own research. Many people liked the New Coke and if Coca-Cola had listened to the market, they could have offered consumers both. They kind of did since New Coke was still produced long after Coke Classic was rushed back to the market, but the reach of New Coke from that point was pretty limited.
They also failed to understand the customers' attachment and identification with Coke. And that identity didn't automatically transfer to New Coke, particularly since they were pushing how it wasn't the same old Coke. Customers wanted their Coke-drinker identity to continue as before, not shift to this Pepsi-knockoff drinker that New Coke represented. Again, Coke failed to understand what the customers wanted - or even the power of their own brand identity.

I guess the part of this analysis that leaves me not very convinced, and in fairness it seems to be the standard analysis on the wikipedia page at this point, is it almost completely discounts the role of taste (taste is peripheral to the role of identity here). My memory is the issue for me and everyone I knew, was they didn't enjoy the new taste. Not that it tasted awful. But it wasn't the flavor we were looking for in our regular cola. Since this is all about a change to the taste, I don't know, I just am not very convinced by the identity argument. I can understand an argument saying they simply wanted coke to taste the way it did for their entire life. That makes a lot more sense to me than people were committed to an identity built around coke.

The argument also kind of shifts the blame onto the customers themselves in a weird way
 


It's a habit of neurodivergent people. Particularly autism and ADHD. If I explain it sufficiently you'd understand. Since you don't understand, clearly I did not explain it sufficiently.
It's more like they can't grasp the idea that someone could disagree with their opinion. As if they could only explain their love (or hate) of something well enough, disagreement with them would become impossible. It's hard to believe that some people don't like chocolate--so maybe if they tell them about all of the things that make chocolate great, again, maybe they'll change their mind.

That's what it feels like, anyway.
 


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