In the late 1970s, Pepsi successfully launched the “Pepsi challenge” marketing campaign which showed that consumers preferred Pepsi over Coco-Cola in blind taste tests. In response, Coco-Cola developed a new formula afar “spending four years testing the new recipe and conducting taste tests with more than 190,000 people.” Coca-Cola’s research showed that “people chose the new formula 55 percent of the time, and the original one 45 percent of the time.” Based on the finding, Coco-Cola replaced the original formula with the new formula and launched the “New Coke”. However, “New Coke” was wildly unpopular, because it replaced the original "coke classic".
Questions:
Based on Ansoff’s product-market matrix, do you think the new coke should be introduced along with the original coke ?
If so, how would you differentiate this new product with the existing product in marketing communications? Should the same brand be used?
If you do not think so, what would you do instead?