Pepsi True
In the last years people have been trying to change their habits towards a more healthy life style. This had some effects in some fast food chain restaurants and even in the soft drink business. “The carbonated soft drink business has been in decline for about 10 years in the U.S. and recently, diet sodas have been underperforming the regular sugared sodas,” (Sacher)
Regarding Emily Tsai’s post “Pepsi True”, a new soda released by PepsiCo containing Stevia, I agree that this maybe be Pepsi’s chance to get ahead of the competition. Stevia is a zero calorie plant based sweetener and an alternative to sugar, it is also much healthier than other artificial sweeteners. This may be the solution that many people were looking for as now they will be able to consume Pepsi without worrying about the amount of calories, sugar or side effect of artificial sweeteners like aspartame
In my opinion the release of this product represents a great opportunity for Pespi as they are appealing those who don’t drink sodas or have stopped as they are concerned about their health. It is an unexplored market in the soda business and Pepsi is the first one to approach it. Pepsi is giving all the “health concern people” a solution so they can consume their product.
Pepsi is doing a great job by innovating and catching up to current trends which have led people towards a more healthy life style.
According to Al Rice and Jack Trout in” Positioning: The Battle of your mind” the easiest way to get into peoples mind is by being the first as you have competitive advantage over them. In Pepsi’s case they may have not been the first ones to try using Stevia as a sweetener but they were the first ones to get it right.
Coca Cola tried adding Stevia to Vitamin Water back in the year but had many complains regarding flavor and had to go back to using regular sugar. In contrast Pepsi worked for three years to get the Peps’s True taste “right”. Going back to Emily’s post I agree that PepsiCo cared more about releasing a high quality product than being the first one to release it, and it was a good decision.
Tsai, Emily. “Spark of the Cola Wars” Blogs.bc.ca. 5 Oct 2014. Web. 5 Nov 2014.https://blogs.ubc.ca/emilytsaitsao/2014/10/05/spark-of-the-cola-wars/