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The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

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Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#21

Post by jacquesm »

duderific wrote: post #15
carlesfe wrote: post #6

This story is so interesting! - Lawyers screwing up the Coca-Cola founder on bottling - Founder strikes back by advertising low bottled prices - Price stable for 30 years - They then try to raise price to 6c - Company discovers that 1-coin pricing boosts sales - President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) - Company using alternative strategies to bring the price up like placing empty bottl…

> President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) Shows you how much power the Coca-Cola company had at the time, that they would even consider trying to make this happen.

There's a funny reference to that in the movie 'Dr. Strangelove'. The one (US Army) guy tells the other (Peter Sellers, acting as an English representative to the US airforce) after he shoots up a Coca Cola vending machine to get a quarter he needs to call the US president to avoid a nuclear war: "Now you're in trouble with the Coca Cola company", all this in the middle of total carnage as if that's an escalation of affairs.

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#22

Post by _kst_ »

readams wrote: post #19

I love the idea of the blanks in the machine! It's an impressively awful idea. The problem of enraging your customers is obvious of course, but an even bigger issue would be if people could predict when the blanks would appear. They'd have to randomize them. But then you might get several blanks in a row. But you could still count the total number of blanks in a particular machine like counting cards at blackjack and…

You could randomize them subject to the constraint that you never have two blanks in a row. That probably would have been the responsibility of the person who loads the bottles into the machine.

Even so, I agree that it's an impressively awful idea. A lot of customers would have been kids who only had one nickel.

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#23

Post by pjc50 »

carlesfe wrote: post #6

This story is so interesting! - Lawyers screwing up the Coca-Cola founder on bottling - Founder strikes back by advertising low bottled prices - Price stable for 30 years - They then try to raise price to 6c - Company discovers that 1-coin pricing boosts sales - President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) - Company using alternative strategies to bring the price up like placing empty bottl…

If all else fails, innovate!

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#24

Post by pjc50 »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #5
percept wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Levy says the folks at Coca-Cola thought about converting the vending machines to take a dime. But doubling the price was too much. They wanted something in between. So they asked the U.S. Treasury to issue a 7.5-cent coin."

>In another attempt, The Coca-Cola Company briefly implemented a strategy where one in every nine vending machine bottles was empty. That is an absurd strategy.

Works for Valve and their crates ..

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#25

Post by ghaff »

cbr wrote: post #18
garth5689 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that the vending machines were not set up to take dimes at the time. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/15/165143816/why-c...

They were willing to lobby for a 7.5 cent coin and update their machines to recognize that, so it sounds like they could have handled dimes. The reason they didn't want to switch to dimes is that it was too big of a price jump.

I'm curious how they eventually handled the changeover. I seem to vaguely recall Cokes when they were a dime (in the mid-sixties or thereabouts) in the machine. I also don't ever recall vending machines taking pennies or giving change in pennies--though perhaps they did. I just also have some trouble believing that Coke vending machines pretty much doubled in price over a few years.

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#26

Post by readams »

theseatoms wrote: post #20
readams wrote: post #19

I love the idea of the blanks in the machine! It's an impressively awful idea. The problem of enraging your customers is obvious of course, but an even bigger issue would be if people could predict when the blanks would appear. They'd have to randomize them. But then you might get several blanks in a row. But you could still count the total number of blanks in a particular machine like counting cards at blackjack and…

> ... an even bigger issue would be if people could predict when the blanks would appear. Recall that old-fashioned vending machines typically did not have the see-though, glass front panel.

I just meant that if they do the obvious thing and load every ninth slot as a blank, customers will know when it's safe to buy by watching other customers. Nobody would want to be the first!

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#27

Post by ninjin »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
duderific wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) Shows you how much power the Coca-Cola company had at the time, that they would even consider trying to make this happen.

There's a funny reference to that in the movie 'Dr. Strangelove'. The one (US Army) guy tells the other (Peter Sellers, acting as an English representative to the US airforce) after he shoots up a Coca Cola vending machine to get a quarter he needs to call the US president to avoid a nuclear war: "Now you're in trouble with the Coca Cola company", all this in the middle of total carnage as if that's an escalation of…

Almost, I believe that the line is "You're gonna have to answer to The Coca-Cola Company" [1]. Brilliant film, one of my all time favourites.

[1]: https://youtu.be/DUAK7t3Lf8s?t=1m49s

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#28

Post by Animats »

jedberg wrote: post #8
carlesfe wrote: post #6

This story is so interesting! - Lawyers screwing up the Coca-Cola founder on bottling - Founder strikes back by advertising low bottled prices - Price stable for 30 years - They then try to raise price to 6c - Company discovers that 1-coin pricing boosts sales - President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) - Company using alternative strategies to bring the price up like placing empty bottl…

> President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) It was because at the time vending machines couldn't make change, and they wanted to raise the price, but doubling (from 5 to 10 cents) would be too much. Instead they figured out how to make the vending machine make change.

Yes, and there lies the interesting story of National Rejectors, Inc., which for decades had a monopoly on fake coin detectors.[1] Even today, most vending machine coin mechanisms are clones of that design. In a mechanical unit about 4 inches square and an inch thick, coins are tested for size, holes, weight, resiliency, electrical conductivity, and magnetic properties. It's an elegant bit of engineering.

[1] http://rwatts.cdyn.com/download/slug%20rejectors/national%20...

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#29

Post by logfromblammo »

duderific wrote: post #15
carlesfe wrote: post #6

This story is so interesting! - Lawyers screwing up the Coca-Cola founder on bottling - Founder strikes back by advertising low bottled prices - Price stable for 30 years - They then try to raise price to 6c - Company discovers that 1-coin pricing boosts sales - President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) - Company using alternative strategies to bring the price up like placing empty bottl…

> President tries to convince the US Treasury to mint a 7.5c coin (?!?!?) Shows you how much power the Coca-Cola company had at the time, that they would even consider trying to make this happen.

I wonder why Coca-Cola went with that ~supergenius~ idea instead of just minting their own "redeem for one Coca-Cola" vending machine tokens and selling rolls of 20 tokens for $1.50.

Then, if you need to raise prices to $0.08 each, you can raise the price of a roll to $1.60, or keep it at $1.50 and replace one of the regular tokens with a non-redeemable collectors' token. And you definitely wouldn't have to follow up with a request for an $0.0833333 coin, or a $0.0925 coin, or any other completely useless fractional denomination.

Re: The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959

#30

Post by kbenson »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #5
percept wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Levy says the folks at Coca-Cola thought about converting the vending machines to take a dime. But doubling the price was too much. They wanted something in between. So they asked the U.S. Treasury to issue a 7.5-cent coin."

>In another attempt, The Coca-Cola Company briefly implemented a strategy where one in every nine vending machine bottles was empty. That is an absurd strategy.

I wonder if they eventually would have run afoul of gambling laws.
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