"Consumer interest confirmed, Ivester wanted not just a plastic replica of the glass bottle, but a much larger version. Over the years, Coke had steadily increased the sizes of its fountain drinks. A large soda now stood at 20 ounces, a full 4 ounces bigger than the previous iteration. "We were really training consumers at that time to drink more and more," says McWhorter."
"Coke didn't have to charge consumers much more because the profit margin on fountain soda was so much higher than on bottles and cans. The huge fountain sodas paved the way for the company to slowly but surely reshape consumer expectations, creating a thirst among Americans for larger amounts of soda, across every packaging type. "The consumers just ordered a large," explains McWhorter."
"Ivester instructed McWhorter to find a way to make a 20-ounce plastic bottle that looked like the original 6.5-ounce glass one without compromising the design's integrity. But sizing up was looking expensive. For one thing, the bottle manufacturers needed to use extra plastic to give the curvy bottle added reinforcement. Curvy bottles also couldn't be blown as quickly as straight ones. The bottles wobbled on filling lines."
Consumers preferred contour bottles over straight-walled ones by five to one, with younger buyers seeing the shape as modern and older buyers associating it with quality. Ivester sought a larger plastic bottle that preserved the original glass design's integrity, leading to a 20-ounce target that matched expanded fountain drink sizes. Coca-Cola increased fountain sizes, training consumers to order larger servings and benefiting from high fountain profit margins. Consumers ordered "large" without knowing ounce counts, encouraging upsizing. Manufacturing the curvy 20-ounce bottle proved costly: more plastic, slower blowing, line wobble, reduced fill volumes, and equipment modifications costing $1–2 million per bottler, with uncertain payoffs.
Read at WIRED
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