ATLANTA -- The Coca-Cola Co. said this week that U.S. sales of Coke's smaller, premium-priced packages, including 7.5-oz. "mini cans'' and 8-oz. glass bottles, have risen 9% this year through October, reported The Wall Street Journal.
Sales of its 12-oz. aluminum cans and 2-liter plastic bottles, long mainstays at supermarkets, are up just 0.1% over the same period, according to Coke, citing Nielsen store-scanner data.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola is increasingly pushing smaller packages as more Americans worry about calories from sugary drinks amid high obesity and diabetes rates.
"Health and wellness is a permanent trend,'' Sandy Douglas, Coca-Cola's North America president, told investors Wednesday at a conference in New York hosted by Morgan Stanley.
He added that mothers in particular are buying 7.5-oz. Coke cans for their children. The diminutive cans have about 90 calories, compared with 140 calories for the more widely sold 12-oz. cans.
The introduction of smaller packages in recent years isn't helping reverse falling U.S. soda consumption, which is expected to slip for a 10th straight year industrywide, the report said.
Douglas said Coke's smaller package sizes only represent about 20% to 25% of its overall mix, with larger packages still dominating.
But the company charges more on a per-ounce basis for the smaller packages, giving the company a boost. A 12-oz. can of Coke, typically sold in packs of 12 or 24, has cost the consumer 31 cents on average this year. The 7.5-oz. can, often sold as an eight-pack, has been priced at 40 cents on average, according to the company.
Much of the downsized packaging has been around for a while, said the report. Coca-Cola rolled out the 7.5-oz. cans nationally in 2010, the same year it began selling a 1.25-liter plastic bottle as an alternative to the 2-liter bottle and a 16-oz. plastic bottle as an alternative to the 20-oz. bottle.
The packaging proliferation is part of a strategy that Coke executives call OBPPC (occasion, brand, price, pack, channel). Coke has identified more than 30 drinking occasions from "family home meal" to "gotta have it to go." Coca-Cola's bottlers in Latin America pioneered the strategy of giving consumers more package choices during the 1990s, the report said.
Click here to view the full Journal report.
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