The Great National Temperance Drink Coca-Cola Enterprises is the self-proclaimed largest bottler of "liquid, nonalcoholic refreshment" in the world. More than 350 million people live in Coke territory and since late last century most have been addicted to the sweetened water. Anyone who prefers sipping an ice-cold Coca-Cola Classic (or one of their companion sodas such as Diet Coke, Sprite, Mr. Pibb, Cherry Coke, Mello Yellow, etc.) should start deciding how much they are willing to pay for them in the grocery store following the New Year. Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., or CCE, is planning to progressively raise the price of their soft drinks by as much as 5% during the next year. This increase is being directly prompted by the imposition of a higher annual target growth for 2000 of 6% by the Coca-Cola Corporation of Atlanta, Georgia, which owns a 40% share in the bottler. This target volume growth is double that of last year's expectation and triple that of this year's growth. While some people are blaming inflation and rising marginal costs (see Figure 1 below) for the price hike and Coca-Cola Co. is pressing fault on the negative impact of foreign currency, another factor may also be creating pressure for Coke to regain lost incoming revenues. This summer's contamination scares and product recalls in Belgium, France and Poland definitely hurt sales in Europe, as well as removed 17 million cases from the supply of products. Another costly segment of this issue was the compensation and distributing costs of 15 million liters worth of coupons for free Coca-Cola products the disgruntled residents of Belgium received. CCE estimated that the total loss was about $103 million, including a case volume decline of 6-7% in Europe. The annual total revenues of CCE from sales as well as the costs associated with operation, delivery, and administrative expenditures, all in terms of millions of dollars. While this graph includes neither long-term debt nor shareholder payments, it does indicate a noticeable jump in marginal costs of production in the last few years. This is closely paralleled by an increase in revenues, indicative of previous price increases. Regardless of the cause, let's look at the consequences of this price increase driven by Mama Coke... While a few consumers are die-hard Coke or Pepsi drinkers, some us easily become indifferent once faced with a grocer's aisle filled with refreshment possibilities.
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Sociology - Essay Example
These perspectives show the same problems in the society but offer contrasting views on how to solve them (Vandelay, 2009). Health hazards are always present in the society since the beginning of time. They are part of the world as much as much as the tiniest organisms are. Although they are infamous because of their effects to humanity, nobody could totally get rid of illnesses. Even scientists who have been studying about illnesses for hundreds of years already could not answer all the questions regarding the causes, symptoms and solutions of some of the illnesses that threaten human existence. But man does not seem to give up easily, as time passes by, more and more attempts to answer essential questions regarding the origins of illnesses have been done. There are some scientists who explain the origins of illnesses as an accumulated result of environmental threats, personal defects and incapability to adapt to the environment. This view has been supported in the work of Boaz (2009). Because of illnesses, some if not all of functions of a person is hampered. And this is where it gets really detrimental. Once a person suffers from an unknown illness, its either he lives or he dies. Although doctors could well explain the biological causes of most of the diseases using experiments, scholars think that there are a lot of other reasons why diseases exist. People have different levels of immunity from illnesses, but this is not the main reason why people suffer greatly from diseases which have been solved by other scientists already. Some people wonder why these illnesses still exist. Perhaps the best way to analyze the reason behind the existence of these illnesses is to look at the social roots of these illnesses. Some scholars say that the answers in today’s biological issues are social in nature. This means that society has a say in whatever |