ABSTRACT
At first acquaintance with the brand relationships model, people often find it easier to see its application to service brands, like banks or car rental companies, or even to corporate brands. Food and drink products have to satisfy more different types of consumer need than probably any other type of product category. This is one of those truisms that must be experienced personally in order for one to understand its essential truth. Relationships with traditional beverage brands – like tea and coffee or beer and some other alcoholic beverages – are a rich confluence of different types of meaning – cultural and social, functional, and hedonic. Led by Coke and Pepsi, whose diet varieties provided nearly all of those brands' growth between 1980 and 1987, low or zero calorie products transitioned from being for people with a weight problem to being lifestyle products, which could be embraced by anyone.
