A healthy diet is becoming increasingly important for consumers, especially women aged 25–35. As a result, they are taking active steps to ensure they are eating healthy but are also looking for other traits, including convenience, natural ingredients, and sensory appeals in order to achieve their nutritional targets. This has created a market opportunity for POM Wonderful to sell an exotic product at a premium price filled with antioxidants, potassium, and other healthy ingredients. Of course, the market success of any product attracts more competitors to the market segment, either with products made with active ingredients or products with added nutrients to help improve consumer health.

POM Wonderful has proactively guarded its market share. Its lawsuit against Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid product also shows it is not willing to cede market share without a fight, particularly if POM Wonderful believes the rival product is making misleading claims about its ingredients.

On the other hand, the FTC ruled that POM Wonderful was guilty of false advertising with its health-related claims. Because it did not conduct human trials, the claims that pomegranate juice can help fight prostate cancer and prevent heart disease cannot be substantiated, according to the FTC. POM Wonderful tried to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. This ruling will have a broad impact on the food industry, and food companies will need to be more careful with their product labeling. It remains to be seen how it will affect POM Wonderful now that it cannot make these advertising claims without human trials. However, if the interest in pomegranates continues to remain high, then POM Wonderful is likely to get past these challenges and persist in its market success.

Questions:-

1. Is there any difference in potential deception between Coca-Cola’s advertisers and POM Wonderful’s advertising?
2. Why does the FTC want food and supplement makers’ claims about the health impact of their products to be substantiated with clinical trials?
3. Do you feel that POM Wonderful—a product with known health attributes—should be subjected to the same scrutiny as drug companies if it wants to make health claims about its product?