As an avid consumer of soft drinks, I've always taken an interest in the business side of soda. Therefore, it was with a good deal of interest that I reviewed Beverage-Digest's Top 10 CSD (carbonated soft drinks) list for 2010 when it was released last week.
Here are the top 10, based upon unit sales volumes:
(1) Coke
(2) Diet Coke
(3) Pepsi Cola
(4) Mountain Dew
(5) Dr. Pepper
(6) Sprite
(7) Diet Pepsi
(8) Diet Mountain Dew
(9) Diet Dr. Pepper
(10)Fanta
A few interesting points:
* Diet Coke overtook (regular) Pepsi Cola as the #2 brand for the first time.
* Both Diet Mountain Dew and Diet Dr. Pepper increased by more than 5% over 2009's levels, which is considered a very large increase for a mature brand. Incidentally, both of these drinks contain caffeine.
* Overall, Diet drinks made up over 30% of total carbonated soft drink sales, which is a new high.
* The top 10 brands combined for a 65% share of the overall market.
* In terms of overall company rankings, Coca Cola remained #1, with a 42% market share. PepsiCo was second, with a 29.3% share.
* Energy drink sales continue to grow at a substantially higher rate than the rest of the industry's volumes. Red Bull and Rockstar grew total volumes by 13% and 19%, respectively.
* The overall U.S. carbonated soft drink business declined 0.5%. This category last grew in 2004, and overall sales are back to where they were in 1996. Obviously, given the country's population increase over the past decade and a half, per capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks is lower than it has been in a long time.
Putting some of this information together, I conclude (perhaps erroneously, but then again, I'm not being paid for my analysis) that in general, the soft drink-consuming public is moving away from sugar, and towards caffeine.
It will be interesting to see whether or not this trend towards diet drinks intensifies if certain municipalities (like New York City) implement a tax on sugary soft drinks.
Hopefully, we'll never find out.
In the meantime, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who is consuming caffeine.
Then again, I might have single-handedly pushed Diet Coke past Pepsi-Cola into the #2 spot.
That should be good for a free soda or two, shouldn't it?
2 comments:
If you were paid for your analysis would you have a different take on it or would just not mention that your conclusion may perhaps be erroneous?
;)
If consumption has gone down, what are they drinking now? Is water in the mix?
Maybe beer or whiskey.
That would account for the nation getting dumber and dumber.
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