Free The Wise Book of Whys by Daven Hiskey, Today I Found Out.com Page B

“Would you care if we switched in this new formulation of Coke and got rid of the old?” They didn’t do this because they didn’t want people to know they were developing a new formula at all.
    They did ask a very similar question that subtly implied the previous question and the result should have clued them in to the dissent. They asked tasters who had liked it, “Would you buy this [new flavor] if it were Coca-Cola?” While the majority said yes, about 10% said no and got angry about the subtle implication of getting rid of Coke. While this is a small percentage, the problem ahead was illustrated in that these 10% were very vocal about their dissent and had a tendency to try to convince other testers that they should switch their answer to “no” too.
    This is exactly how it played out when New Coke was introduced . At first, sales were up a significant amount over the previous year, even more than Coca-Cola expected; and according to surveys run by Coca-Cola, most people preferred the new flavor over the old. Just as importantly, the majority of existing Coke drinkers continued to buy Coke at the same levels as they did before. Further, most of those few customers they lost weren’t switching to Pepsi, they were simply just not drinking Coke anymore. Coca-Cola stock went up and things were looking really good.
    But then the vocal minority started kicking up their heels; complaints trickled in and the angered Coke fans started enlisting the aid of the media. Soon that trickle developed into a flood. One man, Gay Mullins, even started the Old Cola Drinkers of America organization to lobby for the return of the Old Coke, or at the least try to get Coca-Cola to license out the formula to someone else. The fact that in a blind taste test Mullins himself picked New Coke over Old Coke as his favorite didn’t stop him from attempting to sue Coca-Cola over the switch.
    The disse nters started convincing others; many who had never even tried New Coke decided they hated it before even tasting it, primarily because they were upset at the fact that the original Coke was no longer available. Finally, just three months after New Coke was introduced, the public outcry forced Coca-Cola to release the old formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic”.
    So why did they get rid of Coca-Cola “Classic” in the first place, rather than just introducing New Coke as a sep arate drink right off the bat? There were a few reasons, but the big one was because the market for cola drinks at the time was shrinking fast and by introducing another Coke substitute (having introduced Diet Coke in 1982), they feared it would split the market for their product with many people who would have drank Coca-Cola Classic now drinking New Coke. This would allow Pepsi to take the top spot by a good margin, allowing Pepsi to not only claim taste tests showed people preferred Pepsi, but also to boast about how Pepsi was the most popular soft drink in the world. Coca-Cola was unwilling to give this marketing advantage to Pepsi, so decided to get rid of the original Coke, in favor of New Coke. After all, every test they ran showed people preferred the new formulation anyways. What could go wrong?
    Despite this switch not working out the way they hoped, it did in th e end work out amazingly well. After this fiasco, Coca-Cola Classic, instead of continuing its steady decline, began to take back market share over both Pepsi and New Coke. This was despite the fact that when people were blind taste tested, they continued to almost universally pick both New Coke and Pepsi as better tasting than Coca-Cola Classic. Some theorize that the taste tests here are flawed because they often only gave people small sips. Thus, the sweeter tasting Pepsi and New Coke would perform better, whereas when drunk normally, might be too sweet, and so Coca-Cola would win in these cases. Those who theorize this is the reason for Coke losing out in the taste tests tend to state that