Coke vs Pepsi

February 29, 2012 1:24 PM

How has the market share of Coke vs. Pepsi changed over the last hundred years?

I can find recent stats for Coke vs. Pepsi market share, but I can't find a graph that shows the relative market share over the last hundred years. Can you help me find this information?

posted by crazycanuck to food & drink (3 answers total)

I can't point you to this exact answer, but author Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool has a section on the brand marketing of Pepsi and its success in displacing Coke market share. It might contain what you're looking for, and if not it at least has good footnotes and bibliography.
posted by werkzeuger at 2:42 PM on February 29, 2012

1950: Coke 47%, Pepsi 10%
1970: Coke 35%, Pepsi 20%
1980: Coke 36%, Pepsi 28%
1990: Coke 41%, Pepsi 32%
2000: Coke 44%, Pepsi 31.4%, Cadbury Schweppes 14.7%
2006: Coke 43.1%, Pepsi 31.7%, Cadbury Schweppes 14.5%

All these numbers come from the Cola Wars case.
posted by bove at 3:25 PM on February 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Amongst the self-congratulatory fluff, Predator Capitalist posturing and some genuinely interesting backstory and insider's tales, I remember there being a great deal of historical stats and data in Roger Enrico's (then president of Pepsi USA, later CEO of PepsiCo) memoir of the cola wars "The Other Guy Blinked".
posted by likeso at 6:24 PM on February 29, 2012