Fluid milk isn't the only beverage category in a sales tailspin. While the 40-year downward trend in the fluid milk category is well documented, these days the once bustling carbonated soft drink category has followed suit. Diet Pepsi sales were off 5.2 percent last year with market leader Diet Coke plummeting 6.6 percent in 2014, according to Beverage Digest. Overall, the entire diet soda category fell 5.9 percent last year while full calorie soda rose 0.9 percent.PepsiCo officials are so concerned about slumping sales that company officials announced they would reformulate Diet Pepsi and sweeten it with sucralose (Splenda), reported The Wall Street Journal. Since its inception, Diet Pepsi has been sweetened with aspartame, which is the same sweetener still used in Diet Coke.
Reformulating any product comes with a great deal of risk. The last time a major soda had its formula tweaked took place in 1985 when Coca-Cola introduced a new Coke. The marketing failure caused the iconic American company to come back with its old formula in rather short order.
Like milk, the soda category is losing sales to bottled water. In 1976, Americans drank only 1.6 gallons of bottled water, reported the International Bottled Water Association. In 2014, the total volume of bottled water consumed in the U.S. was 11 billion gallons . . . a 7.4 percent increase from 2013. That translates into an average of 34 gallons per person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC).
Only time will tell whether or not the Diet Pepsi formulation can stem the product's free fall. Currently, all Pepsi soda products hold an 8.7 percent market share in the U.S., with top-ranked Coke at 17.3 percent.
