Is It Possible for the Old to Resist Coca-Cola

Is it possible for the old to resist Pepsi cola?

CONTENT

Introduction        

Definition        

The study        

Discussions and analysis        

Suggestions        

Conclusion        

Introduction

Since Pepsi Company was founded in 1902, managers in this company have always endeavored to improve Pepsi cola to make it adapt to the changing market and then to seize the market further. They occasionally distribute questionnaires and make surveys to know about consumers’ psychology as managers attempt to change the production method and find appropriate advertising ways to satisfy consumers’ needs (Bowles Jr et al, 1984).

However, some surveys still indicate that the sale of Coca-Cola is larger than that of Pepsi Cola. The factors resulting in Pepsi Cola only in the second place in the competition are diverse, however, this article only explores whether the old group, which accounts for the majority of population, especially in developed countries, refuses this kind of soft drink or not and whether the factor of health indeed plays a crucial role in the old’ s purchase.

This article has been organized in the following way. The definitions of consumer, consumer behavior together with health are explained in the first part. In the second part, an experiment is introduced about who has reading nutrition labels habit and the findings are also listed. The third and fourth parts are the extension of the second one, that is, analysis of the findings and some reasonable suggestions to the company. Therefore, the third and fourth parts are the cores of the whole article. The last part is my conclusion about the whole article.

Definitions

Some important factors and their effects are analyzed on the basis of explanations of their definitions. Schiffman (1995) suggested that the term, consumer was always divided into two different groups, that is, personal consumer and organizational consumer. However, in this article, the main focus is personal consumer which is widely connected with ordinary people’ life. Schiffman considered that Personal consumer was referred to a kind of persons who purchased and used products or service for the sake of their own use or transferring the values to the other individual persons, for instance, as a present to their relatives. In this situation, this kind of persons was described as final consumer who tried to occupy the value of products by alone.

It is also necessary to introduce the concept of consumer behavior, because only this term, the definition of consumer cannot analyze factors influencing consumers exactly. Engel (1995) considered consumer behavior as a process which involved making decisions and taking actions for the sake of getting, using and disposal of new purchases. According to this explanation, researchers also emphasize on how to consume what consumers acquire and how to deal with these products after consuming them. This is due to the fact that the methods consumers’ dealing with consuming products and their attitudes to the products will indicate the degree of consumers’ satisfaction and whether consumers decide to buy the same goods again, which is beneficial for companies to change marketing strategies. USA Marketing Association (AMA) also gave a definition of consumer behavior, that is, the function of the exchange was based on emotions, perception, actions and context together with the dynamic procedure that those factors above influenced each other (Loudon & Della Bitta, 1988). This definition implies that some reasons may affect consumers’ decisions and those reasons are changeable and even affect each other, more importantly, consumer behavior, in effect, is a process of change.

As Ware Jr says in 1987, the definition of health had two dimensions: quantity and quality. Quantity referred to the life span, meaning people have less opportunity of getting diseases and getting stuck in disorder and live a healthy and happy life so that people lived a longer life. However, in the developed countries, there is merely no difference in life span, the quality is introduced which means the quality of living circumstance, healthcare and so forth. However, how to live a health life and to avoid falling ill are people’s primarily focus.

The study

Some researchers have claimed that health indeed had a role in affecting consumer behavior. However, it is necessary to test whether the old resist Pepsi Cola and whether the factor of health gives rise to the resistance. An experiment is operated by Ranilovic´ (2006) who selected 1,011 subjects that were all over 15 years old randomly by telephone and asked whether they had nutrition labels reading habits and consulted reasons why they had tendencies to do this.

After collecting data, analyzing by building models, the result was that people who were over 55 years old tend to read nutrition labels on the food packaging, which accounted for 42% in the total percent. In contrast, the young below 25 seldom read. Meanwhile, 80% participants also mentioned their reasons why they read nutrition labels on the packaging, in summary, there are three main reasons, namely, curiosity (35%), health counseling (17%) and hope for eating healthier (30%). Interestingly, these reasons were so strongly related with age that young and low-educated subjects considered curiosity satisfaction as their main task while the old and educated participants tend to choose hope for health diet as the reason to read nutrition labels.