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Coca Cola Supply and Demand
December writes "Short article about Coca Cola testing vending machines that raise the price when temperatures rise. " I can see it now: at a hundred degrees it'll cost 2 bucks. And 105 it'll cost 20. At 110 it'll cost as much as a minivan and at 120 it'll cost ya your pension and 401k. It'll still be cheaper than the freakin' movie theater.
I'll pay the extra cash for Pepsi which doesn't much taste like arse.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Just carry a water bottle.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
If this ever happened (which I seriously doubt it would) you could just carry a small can of spray coolant with you. A 10 second squirt on the sensor and bingo! 10c coke :)
Silver
Okay, this is a really, really stupid idea.
If the machine has it's own temperature sensor, what's to stop someone from putting the machine in the shade, or blowing cold air (or liquid nitrogen) on the sensor.
On the other hand, if the machine is internet connected, and goes to a weather database to download what is supposed to be temperature information. . .
But in some areas, temperature varies by location, like in LA, you can drive 10 minutes and reach a higher elevation, or go behind some hills, and you're 10 degrees cooler.
Next thing you know, McDonalds will be charging $2 for a hamburger at 5pm, and $.50 after 8pm. Gee, this isn't any different from the electric company charging more for electricity just because it's Winter, or phone companies charging less for off-peak hours. Or Airlines charging more for, well, what appears to me to be collusion.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Chris
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I don't think you can really call the New York Madonna Incident (NYMI) an "enforcement" by Christians. I would call it one of the few triumphs of good taste in the past decade.
I didn't say it was wrong. I said it was enforcement. There's a difference.
Until fairly recently, art was the creation of beauty, not social commentary except in a very few instances.
I'm no expert of art, but Picasso's Guernica isn't all that recent, and neither are the centuries of political cartoons that have littered newspapers for as long as we can remember.
I don't think the caricature was invented in the 20th century.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
You'd think a company like Coke, which has to be in touch with consumer desires, could do better than that.
We are exploring innovative technology and communication systems that can actually improve
product availability, promotional activity, and even offer consumers an interactive experience
when they purchase a soft drink from a vending machine.
Now, nothing there says that this would not involve price changes. After all, "improv[ing] product availability" could be accomplished by raising the prices in times of hot weather.
My guess is that they did decide to do this, but are backing off because they now understand the firestorm of protest it would inspire.
D
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Good grief... Flash forward to two years from now. You walk up to a condom vending machine. It uses an infrared sensor to, ahem, measure the blood flow in your lower extremeties (more blood, more heat given off), then charges you ten bucks for a pack of trojans...
Folks, I don't think we want to head in this direction (pun not intended).
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Oddly enough, on my campus, the Coke machine prices are the one vending machine price that hasn't changed. (Well, the cup-drop machines went up, but the canned dispensers are still at fifty cents per 12oz aluminum can--which is cheaper than I've seen it just about anywhere else, including some parts of town.
Even so, buying it by the 12 & 24 pack is >=50%cheaper, especially at the K-Mart where I get a 10% discount already. A classmate and I have worked a deal where we split the cost of a case, and I'll keep them in my fridge and bring them to class with me every day.
What I find interesting is how the article notes that this could lead to vending machine price wars, wherein they try to undercut the competition by selling cheaper. Given that for a lot of people, colas are highly substitutable anyway...this could be interesting.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Probably just those stupid CGI polar bears. :) Or maybe a sound booth like at the record store, only you can hear your favourite coke jingle while watching play a version of Quake featuring the CGI polar bears as target practice. Now that would be cool! Of course they'd have to run Linux...
:)
Now if only I had a Beowulf cluster of coke machines...
(Sorry had to be said
My journal has hot
Fortunately, I think that any corporation as large as Coca-Cola (and with the kind of competition they have) realizes that this would be nothing less than corporate suicide.
It would encourage the damage and vandalization of their vending machines, and it would encourage their competitors to advertise, "We don't raise our prices like the Other Guy does when it gets warm outside."
Oh well, I liked Pepsi's products better anyway. *grin* (Mountain Dew!)
... pour cold water on the machine until the
price goes back down.
I wonder if we could drag the machine outside on a winter day and get the coke for free?
With a bit of marketing savvy, they could have spun this to make it sound like the machines are lowering the price when the temperature goes down. Then I'll bet the tone of discussion here would have been quite different. There's already well-known model for changing drink prices over time to match demand. It's called happy hour, and because it's advertised like a discount (instead of "during Happy Hour, we don't gouge you quite as bad as we normally do") nobody complains.
I personally welcome the idea of temperature sensitive Coke machines. I'll wait till the dead of night, carry a 3 gallon (~12 L) jug full of ice and a shopping cart with me to the machine. Then I'll dump the ice all over the machine, empty all the Coke into the cart for $0.01 a can, and disappear into the night. I hope nobody reading this is a cop or an engineer from Coke; I guess I really should stop scheming out loud.
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Win98 sux without these 1337 toolz !!
Yes. Your post should have been moderated up as "informative".
But... interactive experiences? That's a tad weird.
I could see, say, a coin-op low-capacity jukebox embedded in one, or perhaps a touch-screen-based feedback/survey system, but either are still a tad strange in my book.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Check the rebuttal (cited in post 21 in this discussion).
;-)
If they did actually do it, 'tho, and I were an evil lunatic working for Pepsi, I'd consider installing heat lamps.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Now, sure, at first this seems like a darned clever application of modern technology and capitalism. But it's actually a horrible mistake. To wit:
-Most car companies make you haggle to get your new automobile. People hate this; while there's a few who like to make deals, most people feel like they're getting ripped off. Saturn comes along and starts their big "no pressure, no haggle" thing. Consumers love it, Saturn gets market share and repeat buyers, other car companies have to think about changing their pricing structure.
-Airlines sell just about every seat in the plane for a different price. Everybody's sure that they're paying too much, and the entire internet travel industry springs up -- people are willing to spend hours on-line to find a cheaper fare, just because they think the airline pricing structures are out to get them.
Seems to me that, if you buy from a temperature-sensitive Coke machine, you'll always remember that 15-cent soda you got on January 3rd, and evey other can you buy it'll seem like Coke is ripping you off.
So people will try to save money, go to another machine (maybe one in an air-conditioned building) with a cheaper price. Or they'll just buy Pepsi, which has a price they can count on all the time. If they'll buy from Saturn or Priceline to save money, they'll sure do it for a soda they buy every single day.
Interactive experience... probably defined as rocking the machine violently in 100 degree heat while the machine says "please deposit correct change".....
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"Before we can serve you with the nice cold (32 Degrees) Coke that you have already spent $5 for, we would like for you to take a 50 question survey" (Touch interface has 2 buttons "OK" and "Cancel" (Cancel is greyed out).
In most areas, raising the price by too much when it's hotter wouldn't work. Why? Because all someone would have to do would be walk a couple more feet and find another vending machine that doesn't do that. (I prefer those $.25 sodas they sell outside of grocery stores)
Unfortunatley, one large market where Coke has the monopoly is high schools and colleges. All they have to do is donate a scoreboard for the women's softball team and poof, they're the only ones selling soda on campus. When this happens, they can do whatever the hell they want to.. they COULD raise it to $20 even on cold days and since most students don't have that much time to run off of campus between classes (if they even can in the case of high schools) they either fork over the cash or suffer with the metallic tasting drinking fountain water.
People: This is gonna be a weird one. Yes, I could spout endlessly about the ridiculousness of real-time price gouging. But complaining about what is the obvious part--reverse engineering the why is where things get interesting.
Welcome to the new misshapen love child of greed and interactivity.
Coca Cola deigns itself an entertainment provider--this is cool and all, but I get the off feeling that they want to turn their coke machines into something you need to spend an extra thirty seconds standing in front of, doing something, anything as long as they get to inject their brand into progressively higher levels of conscious thought and thus more lasting mindshare.
There are strategists right now drooling over the possibilities of giving a dime off a coke in return for knowing who the Coca Cola BlowJob Woman Of The Month is, or whatever else somebody pays Coca Cola to inject into the national consciousness.
Advertising is starting to get very strange--its hardcore but the very successful funding of television combined with the progessively more desperate advances of Internet properties losing the patience of their Venture Capitalist Sugar Daddies is starting to put their whim at even more of a spotlight in American culture.
There are more than a small amount of irony in the fact that where religion wanes, a new breed of idolatry takes even greater relevance.
As I see it, American culture has created the all too peculiar Caged Idol, whose likeness, usage, and applications are tightly controlled under penalty of legal harassment. One truly has to stand back and appreciate the openness of religion--anyone is free to paint Jesus, or, with no small amount of irony, sculpt a likeness of Mao. Religion is no stranger to enforcement against those who would criticize(witness the furor over the recent New York art exhibit), but in general, religions that allow any imagery is pretty free regarding who may create it.
Entire swaths of society have abandoned religion, but they're no strangers to idols. As one of my friends observed, "Most people at this school find someone interesting if they have a new Abercrombie shirt on."
In a culture where idols are trotted out for selling everything from identities to shoes(or do I repeat myself?), the usage of variable pricing schemes is but a sign of a new level of integration between divergent aspects of American Culture: Idol Worship meets The Almighty Sale.
Temperature sensors are but a ruse--the real concept that Coca Cola wants to play with is the idea that the price of a Coke can change. For simplicity, they'll start out by giving you ten cents off if you slide your card--the knowledge that it was *you* who bought that coke is worth more than a dime. As time goes on, they'll unveil their hyperactive dispensers with LCD touch screen quizzes--remember the national consciousness injections? Those who are "in with Coke" get cheaper product. Those who don't pay more money, which is enough of a pain to force them to answer correctly.
Will this work? Possibly. Will it be degrading beyond all compare? Very possibly.
Comments?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
...right here:
http://www.thecoca- colacompany.com/newsub.asp?NewsDate=10/28/99
Of note is the comment that they are going to provide "interactive experiences" at the coke machine. Any comments ??