Is it possible for the old to resist Pepsi cola?

CONTENT

Introduction 3 Definition 4 The study 5 Discussions and analysis 6 Suggestions 9 Conclusion 10

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.
Discussions and analysis
It is acknowledged that health food and regular exercise can efficiently prevent chronic diseases from happening, such as high blood pressure, obesity and so forth. Nutrition labels is a useful tool to help people to find more healthy food and remove some food junk. Therefore, nutrition labels is so linked to the pursuit of health that persons reading nutrition labels are more likely to live a healthy life than those who do not. It is also evidenced in some earlier studies (Satia et al., 2005) that highest educational office lady, students paid attention to read nutrition labels in order to keep fit and need a special diet to become healthy. Grossman (1972) also calculated data via operations and formulations to find that the investment in health program was higher with the increase of the age, because of life cycle which is inevitable to make persons grow old and finally leave them in poor physical conditions.
At the same time, as the bottle of Pepsi cola(No.122978) says, Pepsi cola contains a great deal of Carbohydrates and 1g Carbohydrate produces 4cal energy. Therefore, a bottle of 600ml Pepsi cola totally produces 400cal energy, which is occupied with three tenths of the basic need every day. It means drinking Pepsi cola a lot may causes obesity and then obesity can lead to high blood pressure and some other chronic diseases which can reduce the year people live. Another important point is that more Caffeine is involved in Pepsi cola, which can combine with other elements to convert into a substance to affect digestion of Calcium which is a crucial element to reinforce our skeleton (Tahmassebi, 2006). Thus, it is not extremely suitable for the old and the young to drink Pepsi Cola. From the point of these arguments, it seems that people over 55 years old are more likely to resist Pepsi cola for the sake of health. | Energy | Protein | Carbohydrate | Of which Sugars | Fat | Of which Saturates | Fibre | Sodium/Salt | Typical values Per 100ml | 182KJ(43Kcal) | Nil | 10.7g | 10.6g | Nil | Nil | Trace | Nil | Per 250ml | 445KJ(107Kcal) | Nil | 26.5g | 26.5g | Nil | Nil | 0.1g | Nil |
Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Sugar, Color (Caramel E150d), Phosphoric Acid, Flavorings (including Caffeine).
From a packaging of a bottle of Pepsi, No.122978.
However, the result reveals mentioned above that the old as well as educated persons read nutrition labels in order to pursue health, which means, due to not accepting compulsory education, even if the old person is over 55, he maybe do not emphasize on health lifestyle and then accept Pepsi cola instead of resisting it. The another study can help us understand completely.
In Paul and Rana’ study conducted in 2012, by means of distributing structured questionnaires to almost 1000 persons who encountered in the street accidentally, they exploited whether education was associated with the willing of purchasing organic food and then analyzed the data carefully. By comparing with these data and building mathematics models, they found P value of education was 0.02 which represented there existed a strong link between buying organic food and education in mathematics. Furthermore, the result interprets that education is positively linked to purchase, in other words, the longer time people study in schools, the more organic food they buy. It also reveals that higher educated persons pay attention to health and try to balance their nutrition via a healthy diet. This is due to the fact that they become literate to read and know what the food packaging says and search for more information related to health., what is the most important that they acquire a great deal of knowledge about health, understand the importance of health and develop a habit of willing to understand more gradually. That is the reason why some companies launch a short education program to strength potential consumers’ awareness of health and replenish nutrition knowledge which is beneficial for their products promotion.
Suggestions
In conclusion, there are two main groups resisting Pepsi, namely, the old focusing on health and the old as well as well - educated persons. In order to attract the first group successfully, new types of Pepsi cola should be innovated by Pepsi Company, which do not include unhealthy components. In past 5 years, managers of Pepsi Company has already been aware of this trend and then launched Pepsi Extreme which includes less Carbohydrate. If managers want to seize market further, they should modify existing products and make these products healthier.
Aiming to the second group, Pepsi managers can hold a consumer education program, because the educated persons have a strong willing to learn new things (LaForge, 1989).During the program, Pepsi managers are advised to broadcast Pepsi cola’s beneficial aspects of components, for instance, Caffeine in cola can remove persons” fatigue and keep brains clear in order to make a concentration and to think critically. Meanwhile, managers should insist Pepsi cola’s core culture and its primary target market, that is, the youngsters and the culture created to attract the youth. Since according to the definition of consumers, one kind of consumers purchases products to satisfy other’s needs (Schiffman, 1995), thus, it is interesting to imagine that as the most popular soft drink among youngsters, it attracts the elderly to buy Pepsi cola for their grandsons or granddaughters to delight them, because the elderly usually have strong desires to live in a happy family and endeavor to do numerous things to maintain family bonds (LaForge, 1989).
Conclusion
Generally, the old are not addicted to Pepsi cola, however, by the experiment mentioned above, it clearly presents that the over 55 years old and educated persons are more likely to resist to Pepsi cola, because the majority of them develop a habit of reading nutrition labels which is strongly related to the health, in the meantime, Pepsi cola contains many components which are damaging to health, the educated persons emphasize on health and they have the capacities of reading and understanding these information.
Some suggestions are proposed for Pepsi Cola Company to attract the old. The first one is to innovate some new and healthier types as the focus the old consider is not the sense of exciting the soft drink offer, but the healthier diets and the sense of comfort. The second point is to attract the young continuously in order to appeal the elderly, because the young usually do not have the ability to earn money, as long as they eager to purchase Pepsi Cola, they will demand it from the old. In this way, can Pepsi cola Company seize market further.

REFERENCE

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