The Same Good Can Take On Different Values

Lynne Kiesling

Virginia Postrel had a really nice post yesterday about how the same good can have different values across time. In this case it’s Diet Coke, and dimensions of differentiation are packaging and temperature, which led Virginia to pay different prices for what, as she calls them, the technocratic economist would perceive as the same good.

An excellent read.

BTW, I finally tried the Diet Coke with Splenda, on the way back from biking in Wisconsin. Tastes more like Tab than the Diet Coke with aspartame. You get more of the spice notes that you expect in a cola. I liked it! And no aspartame aftertaste.

10 thoughts on “The Same Good Can Take On Different Values”

  1. I’m waiting on taste sampling DC with Splenda, although the other products I have tasted with Splenda seem to have an aftertaste. I liked how you brought your wine-tasting skills to the fore.

    Will they soon come out with New Diet Coke and Classic Diet Coke? I’m surprised that Tab has lasted so long.

  2. This is scary. Because I had my first Diet Coke with splenda today with lunch! It was of the goodness.

  3. Pardon me….spice notes?

    I understand taste analysis can be done on anything. But isn’t this a little like a classical music critic opining on the early rounds of “American Idol?”

  4. Hey! My tastes run from the elite to the plebeian. I actually am a bit of a cola afficionado; there’s a cola called Cricket that is made with green tea, and the green tea pulls out some of those spicy flavors. It’s yummy! The aspartame (and the saccharin, for that matter) are such large-mallet sweeteners that they stomp all over and dull some of the other interesting flavors in the cola.

  5. I can attest that the artificial sweeteners are an aggravation to the people at cola companies. I had the opportunity to meet a woman whose job it was to design flavors for PepsiCo. She talked about hating to have to work on Diet drinks since everything just ended up tasting like…well, diet. Her current work was creating the “top note” for the holiday pepsi drink (cinnamon/spice something or other). That these companies have people working in teams on the various notes of soda was an eye opener for me.

    When your tastes (for any food) do run to the more “plebian”, I recommend one of my personal favorite sites for such things: Phoood.com.

  6. The Law of One Price

    Virginia Postrel blatantly violates the misinterpreted “law of one price”, and tells that differing qualities completely justify intra-personal price divergence:I bought a 12-pack of 12-ounce Diet Coke, a staple item in the Postrel refrigerator, for $2…

  7. The Law of One Price

    Virginia Postrel blatantly violates the misinterpreted “law of one price”, and tells that differing qualities completely justify intra-personal price divergence:I bought a 12-pack of 12-ounce Diet Coke, a staple item in the Postrel refrigerator, for $2…

  8. New Diet Coke With Splenda is Really Old Tab that tasted awful and original Tab drinkers would never touch.

    It has that same sickening sweet tast it always did, but with Splenda the sickening feeling stys in your throat for almost ever.

    There are TONS of references in Google to support this observation, and hte product has just been released.
    A call to Coca Cola National call center says that they havent changed anything in the Diet COke formula except exchanging the Nutrasweet for Splenda.
    COKE – Pull it from the shelves before it is a bigger deal than it is now.

  9. New Diet Coke With Splenda is Really Old Tab that tasted awful and original Tab drinkers would never touch.

    It has that same sickening sweet tast it always did, but with Splenda the sickening feeling stys in your throat for almost ever.

    There are TONS of references in Google to support this observation, and hte product has just been released.
    A call to Coca Cola National call center says that they havent changed anything in the Diet COke formula except exchanging the Nutrasweet for Splenda.
    COKE – Pull it from the shelves before it is a bigger deal than it is now.

  10. The new DC with Splenda tastes horrible. It tastes like diet Pepsi and really sucks compared to the regular DC.

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