This morning I was watching a TV show on CNBC about the fantastic success story of Coca Cola. This show was emphasizing on the new challenges that Coca Cola had to face while becoming one of the largest company in the history.At the end, they were showing how Coca Cola was diversifying its range, by selecting new brands, which are now targeting niche markets, but could become on a mid to long term basis potential flagship products.
Coca Cola has invented a new vending machine, equipped with a flat screen, which displays the different products you could get from it. The machine was actually a fountain, and was proposing the different Coca Cola Company’s product, with a wide range of varieties. For instance, you could pick Vanilla Coke, and mix it for example with another beverage.
One of the goal and advantage of the new vendor machine, is that it could actually extracts data of people’s consumption. This is a great idea, because out of these results, Coca Cola is able to get new consumption trend, and then identifies potential new blend and products to develop.
Right now, the vending machine seems to have been set up only in one place. But now, if it is developed further, you could have pretty accurate data about it. It is very difficult in the food industry to get data about customer consumption, as retailers are like a curtain between customers and brands, and I believe Coca Cola used well their advantage, which is heir vending machine business.
This is interesting to see how Coca Cola embraces technology in order to get customer data, and then to leverage it for new products. I hope to find the video soon to post it on this article.
