A Coca Cola Flop
La Moradita
Why does a product fail? How do you know you are making the wrong assumptions? Can a product thrive been created by a business necessity?
La Moradita is a product of Coca Cola that could only stay in the Peruvian market for 6 months before it was discontinued.
A short story behind the curtains
To start this reflection i will first need to explain some products Peruvians consume, and a short background story the likes of David vs Goliath.
Inca Kola is a soda brand Peruvians consume 80 years ago, and when Coca Cola tried to get into the market, it lost miserably. Inca Kola is, as experts point out, among a few privileged beverages more popular at home than Coca Cola. Peruvian consumers tend to have very strong ties to products that they associate with personal and national identity. So Coca Cola ended up buying 38% of Inca Kola’s shares and created a “strategic alliance”, now Coca Cola is owner of the brand Inca Kola anywhere except Peru.
The “Chicha Morada” is another drink that shares the same national pride, its an ancestral beverage (can be alcoholic) created before the era of the Incas. Boiled purple corn with pineapple, cinnamon, clove, and sugar gives birth to an incredible deep flavor.
The wrong assumptions
In 2014 Coca Cola wanted to create a slight carbonated beverage copying the flavors of the chicha morada, but the end product resulted in a Soda with processed flavors far from the original natural product. It could only stay in the market for 6 months.
This failure can be blamed at some factors. First of all and the biggest one is that the product was originated by a business necessity and not a customer one. So the right assumptions and hypothesis could never been met. All other reasons/errors derive from this one.
Firstly It’s hard to innovate with a flavor so rooted in a culture and extremely risky. Chicha morada is a beverage that can be made in different ways. The process is the same but you can change the flavor by adding or subtracting some ingredients. Some people add apple, others lemon, etc.
The best chica morada is the one that’s prepared at home, so the reference for each one is different. Launching a massive industrial product that everyone has its own distinct perspective is simply impossible.
Secondly their marketing and communication team did a horrible work at explaining what the product was. They believed that by printing Inca Kola’s logo on it everyone would know it was a soda drink. They played wrongly with their customers expectations, and no one was expecting a carbonated drink with such a bad processed taste.
Markets studies are important for a reason. Coca Cola’s study did show that the chance of failure in massive markets was huge, but it could have worked in specific niche ones, if, their marketing ended up being the right one.
There is a big market for slightly carbonated natural flavored drinks, and Coca Cola failed to capitalize.
Links:
http://www.up.edu.pe/prensa/noticias/caso-moradita-marketing-share