I’m a Pepsi fan. I like Coke too but I’ll always take Pepsi over Coke if I have a choice. A year ago, one would be hard pressed to convince me that there was no real difference between the two drinks. To me the drinks were very distinct; so much so that I preferred one over the other. But in a college marketing class I took last spring, my beliefs surrounding brand name soda were shattered.
During class one day my professor asked for a show of hands of those who thought they could tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke. I raised my hand along with most of the other people in the class. The professor picked me along with three others and she told us to leave the room. She filled up three cups for each of us. One was filled with Pepsi, one with Coke, and one with a generic cola. We then came in one at a time, took a drink from each cup, and guessed what we thought each one was.
After all of us had finished, the professor revealed the answers. All of us had gotten at least two wrong. I remember that I had gotten the last one right, and I probably only got it right because it was the only choice left. The whole experiment changed my soda buying habits. I switched from buying Pepsi to buying generic cola at the grocery store. Not only did I care much less about the label on the can, I was also paying half of what I was paying when I bought Pepsi.
My Taste Test Experiment
I told my friend Jimmy about the experiment. Sure enough, he was very confident that he could taste the difference, so I challenged him to a test. The test would include him and four other people. The test would consist of two rounds. During each round I would pass around three cups and everybody would take a drink and write down what he or she thought was in each glass. The choices were Pepsi, Coke, and generic cola. Between each drink the participants ate a cracker to clear their palates. After each drink and before the next drink, the participants were to write down what they thought they had just drank. Answers were not shared until the test was over.
Continue reading ‘Pepsi vs Coke: Difference in taste is mostly in your head’
