The Retailer Shoe Starts to Drop...

Back in September I posted a comment about how beverage businesses were now as the strongest position that they were likely to be, and a combination of increasing commodity costs and retailer pricing pressure would be headwinds for 2010.

There is increasing evidence of the second part of that statement with the Costco rift with Coke. Ad Age has picked up on this theme in the context of building brands. In reality this is a value fight - and who deserves to make what margin. This will become an even bigger theme into the future, and with DPS and PEP consolidated, it will be more challenging for KO/CCE to come up with the right value division scenario...