Pepsi Vs. Coke

Compare and Contrast I have decided to compare and contrast the Coke a Cola and Pepsi Cola websites. I found that these two companies have been fighting to bring customers to their side since the birth of the two companies. If you ask anyone who drinks soda, they have a favorite, wether it being Coke or Pepsi. A major factor in getting a customer to buy your product is marketing. If a company appears to the public as an inviting company, people will flock to them. This is especially important in a case such as this where the two products are very similar in taste. In this essay I will compare the two websites in their ability to build a relationship with the customer and you will know which company is the better marketer.

Let me begin by giving the homepage URL to the two websites: Coke http://www.coca-cola.com/ and Pepsi http://www.pepsi.com/current/index.html . There are evident differences between the two companies right off the bat. Coke has a banner that changes every few seconds that shows people having a good time or having a Kodak moment. When you arrive at the Pepsi homepage, you are greeted by an onslaught of pictures of Britney Spears, and a difficult, hard to manage link system. Coke uses simple pictures with brief descriptions for links and a bar with other links to get you to other portions of the site. Pepsi on the other hand has pictures of Super Stars, contests, and banners promoting other things.

The link table that Pepsi has takes you to pages filled with Pop Stars and Professional Athletes and somewhere in the midst of all of the madness, there is information about the products that they have. In Pepsis site it seems like they would loose the interest of the older customers that do not know how to get around a website with easy. Cokes website is very easy to navigate and find what you want without having to go through nonsense. Pepsi is not the only one who sponsors athletes, so does Coke, but they seem to do it in a professional manner, not subjecting you to picture after picture of pop stars.

After noting the two websites set up, the real question is, What market is each company trying to build a relationship with Pepsi tries to grab the attention of the customer by using star power and big contests and Coke seems as if they are trying harder to show you what they have to offer and what they do as a company. I believe that Coke has done a better job of building a relationship with the customer as a whole. Coke shows that they are caring, like to have some fun, and are also a competitive business. They also have a link for different countries, so each country around the world can visit their own local site.

Pepsi might be building a relationship with younger kids by wowing them with the star power that they pack, but did not really seem to build a lasting relationship. For a second opinion of the two websites I polled my family that consists of three other people, my mother, my father, and my sister. Each of them felt that Coke did a better job of creating a relationship with them. They felt that Pepsi was trying to sell them people rather than a product. With everything in consideration, I feel that Coke has built the better relationship with their customers by building a easy to navigate website, using a friendly approach, and providing all the information a customer would need in all of the right places.