I remember hearing somewhere that Coca-Cola once had the chance to buy the Pepsi Company. If that is true that was a pretty bad decision although it hasn’t hurt the Coke people very much.....
I read an article saying that a long long time ago. The gist was (this was a pro-coke styled article) that coke believed (rightly or wrongly) that by acquiring pepsi it would eliminate the "the contrast of choice". The thought process was that by having a pepsi or a competitor, consumers would be free or feel free to make a choice, when the consumers have no choice or feel there is no choice, there satisfaction goes down with the sole product. The way some execs saw it, at the end of the day, coke would always have competitors like juice or other beverages, but they needed to have a soda competitor so that people could compare them to someone (the analogy was how a good movie needs a villain for the hero, or a sports team needs someone to play against, because no one wants to watch a great team just practice all the time). The other knock was about costs, with the feeling that buying pepsi would have meant that coke would now have to pay for all the soda advertising in the world, but would not get all the benefits of doing so.
Not sure if this was wise or not, or even how true it is, when I read this, years and years ago, I was skeptical that this would even have been possible with anti-trust concerns and what not.