Cola War between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo

The first 200 words of this essay...

Business Studies 1

Cola War between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo

Meili Wang

Bing Xu

27th Nov. 2008

Introduction

When a new business starts, there are always hundreds of competitors fighting for the cake division. While only minority of them can stay up to be the leaders of the whole industry after intense competition and restructuring. Especially during the process of industry globalization, there would appear huge industry giant companies. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in beverage industry are examples for birth of giants in their industries. They have competed for the worldwide beverage market "throat share" since the past more than 100 years. During the "carefully waged struggle" period (1975-1995), both of them kept a growth rate at average around 10% for the consistent increase in the US and world Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSD) consumption. However, their comfy situation has not last a long time since worldwide consumption for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo both slowed down in the late 1990s. Therefore, they began to take corresponding "bottling, pricing and brand strategies" (Yoffie, 2002, p1). With the continuing intense competition, the cola giants are facing new challenges; this essay aims at giving possible strategies that can be applied