Coca-Cola-flavored canned coffee appears in Japan. Would you like to be so High?

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The Japanese love coffee, but they are not so enthusiastic about cola.

In order to upgrade its refreshing effect, Coca-Cola launched a coffee-flavored Coke in the Japanese market this month.

The coffee cola, which contains 50% more caffeine than regular cola, is now available in vending machines in Japan (which is currently the only sales channel). It is mixed with a wide variety of beverages with a price tag of 130 yen, which is more expensive than ordinary small cans of carbonated drinks. But it does not deviate from the regular price of canned coffee.

The new cola has been tried and described as smelling more like coffee, and if you close your eyes and plug your ears (to avoid the rattling of carbonated drinks), you might think it's a cup of pure coffee.

If you remember, this year Coca-Cola launched a Coca-Cola Coca-Cola Plus in Japan that suppresses fat absorption. The name is similar to the new Coffee Coke. Coca-Cola Plus entered the market as a "licensed health food", sugar-free, calorie-free and added a source of dietary fiber. Coffee Coke is also moving closer to Coca-Cola Plus in terms of its health index, which contains half as many calories as regular Coke. Of course, its biggest selling point is not good for keeping fit, but a mixture of two exciting substances that stimulate the human cortex.

Coffee Coke, which is doubly excited, may also have something to do with the local people's love of coffee when it is launched in Japan. According to Inryou Souken, a beverage market research and consulting firm, instant coffee accounted for 20 per cent of the Japanese soft drink market in 2016, just 3 per cent less than instant tea, which ranked first.

Japan's developed convenience stores have made great contributions to the popularity of ready-to-drink coffee. Suntory, Fuyong, Parade, ASEED and other coffee brands are all complete, while Suntory is the best seller in ready-to-drink coffee, occupying 20% of the market share for several years in a row. In addition, Japan's overtime culture has also promoted coffee sales, after nightfall, office lights are the norm, urban white-collar workers gradually developed the habit of drinking a lot of coffee.

Last year, the market for instant, freshly ground and bottled coffee in Japan was about $7.3 billion, although it was only about half that of the United States, according to Euromonitor International. But given the maturity and population of their respective coffee markets, this figure is not small, compared with retail sales of only $1.624 billion for these three types of coffee in China.

Coke is not as important as coffee in Japan. Although Japan is Coca-Cola's second-largest market after the United States, with annual sales of more than $10 billion, and about half of the vending machines in Japan belong to Coca-Cola, the most popular Coca-Cola products in Japan are not carbonated drinks sold in the United States. Their favorites are Coca-Cola's sub-brands Georgia canned coffee and orange-flavored water and green tea.

In this way, it is a tricky way to use the coffee that the Japanese like as an introduction to encourage them to buy cola, but it is hard to say whether it will really be recognized.