Coca-Cola spends with games, but sale falls

Coca-Cola, the world's largest manufacturer of soft drinks (in recipes), lost market share in the United Kingdom last year, despite having spent an estimated 100 million pounds (US $ 151,4 million) in the four years leading up to the London 2012 Olympics.
The American beverage industry group was not the only major international sponsor lost market share in the year of the Olympic Games in the United Kingdom. The American also Procter Gamble & (P&G), maker of Pampers diapers, also suffered at the hands of British consumers tight financially, according to Bernstein Research.
The fall in market share despite the huge marketing effort, puts a question mark as to the effectiveness of the sponsorship of the Olympics. In research conducted at the time of the games, consumers identified incorrectly the HSBC Bank and retailer Tesco as sponsors.
Coca-Cola's sales fell 3.3 percent in volume last year on the United Kingdom market, compared with 2011, against a growth of 10% of the rival Pepsi, according to Britvic, the British bottler of Pepsi with shares traded on the stock exchange. Coca Cola, bottled by Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), is the largest supplier of soft drinks in the United Kingdom, with a market share of 27.6%. In terms of value, sales last year grew by 0.8% to 1.15 billion pounds (US $ 1.74 billion), a breakthrough still very much below the 7.4% of Pepsi.
In annual results released in February, CCE assigns the 3% drop in sales in both the United Kingdom and continental Europe the "current conditions". The decline was greater in the fourth quarter, 6%.
The CCE said being irrelevant concerns with the fact that the sponsorship of the Olympic Games have not translated into sales growth last year. "For us, it was always use this [sponsorship] to establish long-term relationships with customers, as retailers and bars and, in addition, a long-term brand relationship with consumers and retailers," he said in a statement.
For its part, the P&G has been losing market share in Western Europe since the end of 2011, according to an analysis of Bernstein with data from Nielsen.
"The United Kingdom market has shown himself to be incredibly competitive, because consumers are unwilling to spend money," said Ali Dibadj, an analyst at Bernstein Research in New York. He said that part of the market share lost was linked to specific companies: Britvic, for example, assumed that the Olympics would provide a boost to rival CCE, and so created a surge of aggressive promotions.
But, he added: "it all comes down to the fact that by virtue of the British consumer to be more restrained, the effectiveness of promotions is lower".
In its annual assessment of the British soft drink sector, Britvic admitted another difficulty: the desire to defend public health organizations to intensify the regulations on the carbonated soft drinks sector. The Britvic said there is "a more intense focus" of the Government, civil society and the media on the impact of soft drinks on health, and that although the Government is choosing to work with manufacturers on the basis of voluntary partnership, "a series of non-governmental organizations are more aggressive in defence of greater regulation".