可口可乐公司的原始饮食苏打品牌 Tab 将前往苏打墓地，加入了 Like、Leed 和 Limette 等退休品牌。
【原文】
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Tab, the Coca-Cola company’s original diet soda brand, is headed to the soda graveyard, joining retired brands such as Like, Leed and Limette.
Coca-Cola has announced that it is discontinuing Tab after 57 years on the market, and fans of the drink will have until the end of December to purchase their last can of nostalgia.
This lesson was lost on Coca-Cola, which didn’t bring a diet drink using the Coca-Cola name onto the market until 1982, when it introduced Diet Coke.
Contrary to the company’s original fears, Diet Coke was an immediate hit. Even though the flavor of the new beverage was not a carbon copy of the sugar-sweetened version, customers took to it. And the main victim of Diet Coke was not the original Coke, but Tab. Over the years, Tab’s market share dwindled; by 2019, its sales made up only about 1% of the Coca-Cola portfolio.
Yet the drink managed to retain some passionate devotees, even as rumors of its impending doom circulated on and off over the years. A Tab shortage in 2018 caused self-described Tab-aholics to stockpile their favorite beverage, and petitions to save the drink were circulated and sent to the company.
They couldn’t stop the inevitable. Coca-Cola is trying to cut underperforming brands, and even modern ones like Odwalla juice and regional sodas like Delaware Punch are poised to fall prey to the cost-cutting guillotine. The company says more than half of the 500 brands it currently markets will disappear in the near future.
Tab lovers might have less time than they think to load up; serious Tab fans have begun snapping up any six-packs that might still be lurking on store shelves.
It won’t be long until the only cans left will be in the basements of Tab-aholics.
Jeffrey Miller, Associate Professor, Hospitality Management, Colorado State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.