I think it was in fact a big money loser for them, though I don’t have the numbers. It all stemmed from blind sip tests where the new formula finally was able to consistently beat pepsi. When drinking lots of it however especially with other food as part of a meal, people prefer it not so sweet.
What most people do not know is that there were at least 6 and possibly 8 different formulas of "new" coke out there. At the time New Coke came out, I was working for the market research company that did all their surveys and market share analysis. From my perspective, watching the entire New Coke campaign from start to finish, I thought the entire thing was absolutely brilliant.
We did a lot of pre-launch surveys and trackers prior to the campaign. After they introduced New Coke, the "old" Coke left the market pretty quickly. In less than a month, there was no 'old' Coke to be found nationwide. There were still places you could get it (Japan, and Mexico I remember specifically - I remember talking to folks who shipped cases from Japan). Now, when we'd do the surveys after New Coke had been out for a while, it was obvious from responses that there were several different 'flavors' in different regions. They were testing reception of them, and performing what was essentially a massive consumer preference test using the entire country as a testbed.
We'd start the surveys by asking for what people had purchased in the past week. What I found interesting was the mass of people that were buying New Coke out of what could only be called a force of habit, because you'd get to the point where they started asking specific questions about taste, carbonation, sweetness and whatnot, and you'd get all these terrible responses - that the people really hated it, as almost a visceral reaction, yet we'd already determined that they were still buying it.
There were also distinct regional differences. Some regions obviously were much sweeter than others. Some had higher or lower carbonation. They tabulated comments from the regions, looking for whatever it was they wanted to see, and over time, we saw things normalize a bit, with more consistency nationwide, though there still seemed to be some regional differences that were harder for me to quantify from my point of view anyway.
So, eventually they brought back old coke, called it 'classic coke', (the surveys regarding the name were hilarious, you'd read through this big long list of confusing options to the interviewee, then you'd stop, and say, "I realize that was fairly confusing, so I'd like to read it to you again". And you had to re-read it. If the respondent wouldn't let you, it wasn't considered a completed call, so you didn't get credit for it. I was a supervisor at the time, but I spent a fair amount of time closing quotas we had to meet myself as well. i.e., we needed one more female in New Jersey who'd purchased at least a twelve pack over the past week and it was getting close to 9pm their time. It was madness.
Bottom line when all the dust settled. ... Coke gained 6% market share. The soft drink market is bloody huge. 6% is a lot of money.
That's not even to mention the huge press boost given to Coca-Cola by the almost unimaginable amount of free publicity they were getting during the whole thing.
Overall, I have a completely different reaction to what most people call the 'new coke fiasco'. I thought the entire exercise was fascinating, and wish I could have talked to some of the executives involved at the time. It was some of the most interesting work I had at that company.