For my consumer behavior analysis, I have selected The Coca-Cola Company. I chose Coca-Cola because it offers an opportunity to examine how consumers choose between familiar products in a competitive market. Its sparkling soft drink portfolio includes Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Sprite, and Fanta (The Coca-Cola Company, 2026). These products provide several possibilities for studying brand loyalty, personal preferences, and purchasing decisions.
As a communications student, I am interested in how a company’s messages influence the way people perceive its products. Coca-Cola gives me an opportunity to explore how advertising, packaging, and brand associations might affect consumer choices. A beverage purchase may seem simple, but it raises interesting questions. Does someone select a drink because of its taste, price, familiarity, or connection to a particular occasion? What would convince that person to try another product? These questions make Coca-Cola a useful subject for my analysis.
My Chosen Category: Sparkling Soft Drinks
My chosen category within Coca-Cola is sparkling soft drinks, with a particular focus on Coca-Cola Original Taste, Diet Coke, and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. Narrowing the analysis to these products will allow me to compare choices within the same company while examining differences in consumers’ expectations.
I plan to explore how taste preferences, attitudes toward sugar, price sensitivity, and purchasing habits influence product selection. For example, I want to investigate whether consumers who want to reduce their sugar intake switch to another Coca-Cola product or leave the category altogether. I also want to examine how social settings, such as family meals or gatherings, influence what people buy. These are questions to investigate rather than conclusions I can assume in advance.
Three Resources for My Analysis
The Coca-Cola Company’s 2025 Annual Report
The company’s annual report will provide background on its business, beverage portfolio, competition, and market risks. This resource will help me understand the business conditions surrounding consumer decisions and identify the challenges Coca-Cola considers relevant (The Coca-Cola Company, 2026). Because the report presents management’s perspective, I will use it to understand the company’s strategy while recognizing that it does not directly establish consumers’ motivations.
The Coca-Cola Company’s Brands and Beverage Portfolio Page
Coca-Cola’s portfolio page will help me examine how the company describes its response to consumer preferences. The page discusses reduced-sugar options, low- and no-calorie beverages, and smaller packages (The Coca-Cola Company, n.d.). I will use this resource to analyze how product variety and portion choices are positioned to appeal to different needs. It will also provide examples of the messages consumers encounter when researching the company’s products.
The CDC’s “Fast Facts: Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption”
This resource from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2026) provides an independent perspective through consumption data and links to research on beverage intake. I will use it to understand broader consumption patterns and identify demographic or behavioral factors worth exploring. I will pay attention to the dates and populations covered by individual studies because their findings may not represent all current Coca-Cola consumers. This resource also cannot explain brand preference by itself.
Together, these resources will help me connect Coca-Cola’s product and communication strategies with broader patterns in beverage consumption. My goal is to develop an analysis that explains how personal preferences, social influences, and marketing messages may shape consumers’ choices within the sparkling soft drink category.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026, April 14). Fast facts: Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/php/data-research/sugar-sweetened-beverages.html
The Coca-Cola Company. (n.d.). Brands and beverage portfolio. Retrieved October 29, 2026, from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/brands
The Coca-Cola Company. (2026). 2025 annual report (Form 10-K). https://investors.coca-colacompany.com/filings-reports/all-sec-filings/content/0001628280-26-010047/ko-20251231.htm
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