Dr Pepper Matches Pepsi In Sales

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 1, 7:11AM EDT

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Dr Pepper Matches Pepsi In Sales — © Image by Rob Hayek via 24/7 Wall St.

For decades, Pepsi and Coke have been at war with one another in grocery stores, special promotions, and exclusive deals with food retailers like McDonald’s and KFC. That “one on one” competition is over for now. Sales of Dr. Pepper have matched those of Pepsi. The Cola Wars are now a three-horse race.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “The regular versions of Pepsi and Dr Pepper are neck and neck in a spot that Pepsi has held nearly every year for the past four decades, according to sales-volume data from Beverage Digest.” The Journal says Dr. Pepper’s improvement is due to extensive marketing investments and promotions on platforms like TikTok.

In reality, the soda race only has one horse. Coke has a market share of 20%. Dr Pepper, Sprite, and Pepsi are bunched close together at just below 8% each. Several less well-known brands and diet solas make up the balance of the market.

It would be tempting to tie soda market share to the corporate parents of the three brands. However, PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP | PEP Price Prediction), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), and Keurig Dr Pepper (NASDAQ: KDP) are each multi-brand companies. Coca-Cola, for example, has a large snake business. Warren Buffett owns Coca-Cola stock.

Ultimately, the horse race among sodas is as much for bragging rights as revenue.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.