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Comment by the_bear | Hacker News Reader

It wouldn't surprise me if this benefits Coke by making consumers more interested, but hurts Coke by pissing off store owners. Most stores that sell soda are set up for the consumer to take the soda from the front of a long row, and then the row slides up in the display. I'd guess that some customers would create a mess trying to find their name and not bother to clean it up (if they can - many soda refrigerators can only be easily loaded from the back).

If my speculation is true, that probably gives store owners an incentive to de-emphasize the placement of the Coke so that random browsers will be less likely to create a huge mess. Obviously store owners have to sell Coca-Cola because some customers are specifically looking for it, but they don't have to give it prime real estate.

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Or, it may give store owners an incentive to give Coke more shelf space, so consumers can see more names at once.

"...give Coke more shelf space..." (emphasis mine)

Not to be pedantic, but most of my local stores (Big Box and one-off convenience stores) charge for shelf and floor space. Basically, charging rent for the location soft drinks are offered. If Coke wants more room, Coke has to negotiate for more room.

As for me, if I'm buying Coke at a convenience store for a drink on the road, I only care that the bottle says "Coca Cola" and I'm taking the coldest or frontmost bottle.

Exactly, stores in meatspace don't care too much about eyeballs (unless they're prominently placed ones - which double as billboards).

They care about $sales/sqft because they have to pay the rent and the stuff that pays better will get more shelf space. I'm doubtful, but it's possible that personalized coke bottles could end up selling other stuff too, but it better be like crack or it's not gonna get more shelf space.

In Australia cans and bottles sold in those stores just had 'mate' or 'boss' on them, there were only named ones in supermarkets and stores that had a lot of them horizontally iirc. I presume they did this for precisely that reason.

In NZ, at least in supermarkets, Coke usually sends their own employee to manage their shelf space for most of the day. The only time I ever touched the Coke shelf was late evening near closing.

As i've never worked in a servo I couldn't confirm if this is the case.

Coca-cola, along with pretty much every brand, pays quite a lot to have it's product on the shelves or on display ends. Pissed off or not, supermarkets are being paid to position it. And usually paid for prime real estate.

I feel stupid for asking this but - what is the big deal with having my name on a cokebottle? The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me (well, that is probably why I don't work in marketing, which is a good thing).

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