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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> generic store-brand colas, which taste exactly the same as Coke and Pepsi and are cheaper, yet Coke and Pepsi haven't collapsed after decades.

which is because coke & pepsi uses massive advertising campaigns to ensure the brand is doing the heavy lifting. Coke is basically a marketing company that happens to sell a liquid drink.

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I would also argue, that they in fact, do not taste the same, even in double blind tests I’ve conducted in this area for college

Even Pepsi and Coca-Cola have obvious differences with many preferring the latter. Store-brand cola is an even bigger difference.

Marketing aside, power-law of costs is fairly common. If a good guitar runs you $300 and a professional guitar runs you $1500, a custom guitar for $40K is still only going to be marginally better.

Every single store sells coke or Pepsi. Supermarkets might have a range of off brand which some taste good and some don’t. But Coke doesn’t cost that much, I’m not going to learn a bunch of new brand with spotty availability to work out which one tastes good to save 30 cent.

They are also distribution network companies. If I'm not mistaken, Coke & Pepsi do their own deliveries. And they are large enough that they will sign exclusivity deals with restaurants and venues to sell their products (often supplying the equipment). Generic store-brands have no reach to venues and restaurants outside of their stores.

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