Just Right Downing a Coke, Pepsi, or Seven-Up is such a way of life both here in America and around the globe that one forgets there's really no reason to be drinking a soft drink were it not for whim, taste, convenience, and heavy, heavy marketing. One can quench one's thirst just as well, and frequently with far fewer calories, drinking a good old-fashioned glass of tap water.
Soft drinks are in no way essential to life, as long as there's water around.
This simple fact may not seem important, but for the nation's soft drink makers, it is a fact of life whose many implications they have to deal with day in and day out as they vie for selling space at the nation's supermarkets, fast food soda fountains, or deli-coolers. Every time a customer buys a Diet Pepsi out of a vending machine, a Coke at McDonald's, or a Dr. Pepper at a Cumberland Farms convenience store, he's making a decision, conscious or not. And next time he or she is there, they may decide to buy another brand, or as Coke and Pepsi have recently discovered, if the consumer's a Russian or Asian experiencing economic troubles, he or she may stop buying entirely. Faced with a potentially fickle consumer frequently looking for a new taste treat means that soft drink makers are always operating in a highly competitive environment and always will be. Witness, for example, the incredible success of Nantucket Nectars, which was started inauspiciously by two young men initially delivering their special fruit nectar to yachts anchored in Nantucket Harbor and which eventually spawned a host of imitators selling naturally-flavored fruit drinks.