New Coke was a disaster because Coca-Cola did not let its consumers choose between the two products and instead planned to stop making Coke Classic entirely. There is some similarity to Microsoft's decision to have Windows 8 boot into Metro by default.
Coca-Cola's pre-release focus groups told them that a minority of people would have a very hostile reaction to the elimination of Coke Classic, but they decided to ignore the data. You can see something similar if you read the comments of the Windows 8 development blog.
Coca-Cola's pre-release focus groups told them that a minority of people would have a very hostile reaction to the elimination of Coke Classic, but they decided to ignore the data. You can see something similar if you read the comments of the Windows 8 development blog.