Beginning in 1980, Pepsi decided to do something taboo in the advertising industry. They challenged Coca-Cola with head-to-head taste tests of both beverages. First, they conducted 3000 blind household taste tests. They found that the majority of people preferred Pepsi over Coca-Cola. Then they began the “Pepsi Challenge” and took their war on Coca-Cola to the streets. As a result, a lot of shoddy science was performed and a legend was born. Then, they began a more public and national challenge, bringing pop-up taste tests to malls and large department stores, and filming commercials of people taking the “Pepsi Challenge” and finding, to their surprise, that they preferred Pepsi. Pepsi contains about 5% more sugar than Coca-Cola.
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So, Pepsi, it is said, is preferred in taste tests. Coca-Cola even performed its own taste tests and got similar results. It is claimed that this, in part, spurred them to introduce New Coke, the sweeter failed reformulation of Coca-Cola that caused great outrage among Coke drinkers.
Interestingly, New Coke then beat Pepsi AND the original formula Coke in blind taste tests. This caused dedicated Coca-Cola drinkers, after choosing New Coke over old Coke, to fly off the handle, in many cases. And can you blame them? They thought they hated New Coke and were glad that Original Coca-Cola was back. Most sources don’t bother to question this ‘data.’ You should. Just how scientific were these tests? How well-designed were these studies? Do most people really prefer Pepsi? Did Pepsi win the Cola Wars?
First, Pepsi clearly never won the cola wars. Coca-Cola had lost direction for a while and reached what we would probably call a bump in the road. They took a big swing with New Coke, which, although it failed miserably and left customers angered (and even feeling betrayed), worked out well in the end, with sales of original Coca-Cola rebounding. Coke is still on top, to this day.
With hundreds of thousands of tastes tests, you’d think there was no question. People prefer Pepsi AND New Coke over Coca-Cola. They are both sweeter. Let’s deal with the sweeter taste itself, disregarding product.
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People Prefer Sweeter Products in Taste Tests
Taste tests often reveal that people like a sweeter product. However, a taste test is not a test of habit and consumption. It’s a test of momentary preference. When a person chooses a sweeter beverage, this may simply reveal the now well-known fact that people often like a sweeter taste for a short period and in SMALL quantities. This explains how candy corn survives.
In other words, a blind taste test comparing Pepsi and classic Coca-Cola might be expected, via the sweeter taste alone, to skew toward Pepsi. If the testers were allowed to continue drinking the beverages, they would more quickly grow tired of the sweeter taste and desire a switch to the still-sweet but less sweet Coca-Cola.
This is but one reason that such tests are not a true measurement of consumer preference. Sure, you might like the sweet taste for a few sips, but not dozens. You may even desire a sweeter taste sometimes, go for a Pepsi, but overall, still prefer Coca-Cola.
But, let’s not get carried away, as Malcolm Gladwell, one of the persons who championed the ‘people prefer sweet’ hypothesis often does. “Hey, even though people like it for a few sips, it’s still a bad soda.” That’s a bit too pat and easy. Many people actually DO prefer Pepsi.
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Other Factors Influencing Pepsi Taste Tests
Temperature is another problem. Colder temperatures mask sweeter tastes. If you serve the same beverages at different temperatures in two different tests, many people will switch their preference!
But there are other problems. The tests are blind. People do not drink blind. Did you know that if the caramel coloring is removed, some people mistake Pepsi or Coke for Sprite or 7UP? It sounds crazy but it’s true. Flavor perception is quite complex. We ‘taste’ not only with our taste buds, but with our nose, and our eyes. Expectations play a role. The short-lived Crystal Pepsi fell victim to this.
The First Beverage Served Wins? Labeling Matters?
The problems continue. The first beverage served always has a leg up on the competition. Serve Pepsi first, Pepsi is more likely to come out on top. And, even the labeling of the test samples can play a role.
Let’s say we label the samples beverage A and beverage B. More people tend to like ‘A’ than ‘B.’ That’s right, they have a preference for letters. And, they have a preference for numbers or at least simple ones between one and ten. You guessed it: More people like the number one. This realization causes researchers to choose oddball numbers like 528 and 789. And we’re not done. The container used can affect the results. A small styrofoam cup may influence one result while a small paper cup might influence another. Also, the last meal the participant ate. It goes on and on.
The Last Meal Problem
Remember all the taste tests done in malls? Surely, people eat in malls. What they ate just prior to participating in a “Pepsi challenge” could easily cause them to prefer one taste, for the moment, over the other. For instance, I wouldn’t be surprised if, after eating a spicy meal, more people chose the sweeter Pepsi or the sweeter New Coke.
A scientific test needs to be properly randomized. Are the passersby in a mall, or even a street, random? There may be more young people at the mall. More Pepsi drinkers are young.
And, if you are a Pepsi drinker, how much does the package affect your purchase? We buy with our eyes. If you can’t see, are you choosing your overall preference?
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Blind taste tests, quickly done, based on a simple choice of A or B do not yield accurate measurements. Even if Pepsi-Cola wins over Coca-Cola 60% of the time, guess what happens if you remove the blindfolds and keep the labels? Coca-Cola wins most of the time! In marketing terms, this is known as “sensation transference.” It may be hard to shake people’s association with their favorite beverage of a distinctive red label. Since as early as the 1940s, advertisers have known that customers unconsciously respond to a product’s packaging and that it’s even possible that the packaging itself changes their taste experience! Couple that with the nostalgia and, let’s face it, iconic nature of Coca-Cola in America, and Pepsi was a bit too confident in it’s taste tests. Coca-Cola, for its part, was a bit too confident as well, since together with slumping sales, the company over-reacted just a bit.
The question is, do our preferences suddenly change? Only if we believe our reaction to one swallow of a beverage, while blind, accurately reflects our preference. Those people who said ‘I thought I preferred Coke, but I chose Pepsi’ probably went right on buying Coke. We can see why Coca-Cola made a mistake, at least initially, with New Coke.
Pepsi Won the Cola Wars!
While the “Pepsi Challenge” advertising campaign was not scientifically valid, it was quite successful in sheer terms of advertising. Pepsi covered the airwaves to such an extent that by the latter part of the 1980s many were proclaiming that Pepsi had, “Won the Cola Wars!” These premature proclamations were not based on anything more than a perception that the Pepsi taste tests had once and for all proven the superiority of Pepsi-Cola over Coca-Cola.
Sales of Pepsi Cola increased and Pepsi even outsold Coke in some markets. These spikes in sales did not last and Coca-Cola came out on top in the end. Some speculate that Pepsi should have done more to maintain the new-found enthusiasm for its product. This assumption that advertising is the ONLY factor influencing the continued sales of a product is, in a word, mistaken.
The history of soda pop advertising does not tell us that advertising has a lot of power when a product is already doing well. Advertising has the most power when times are tough and people are NOT buying as much. In other words, no amount of money dumped into advertising would have necessarily cemented Pepsi’s market share. Coca-Cola drinkers eventually found their way back to Coke.
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Key Points Summary for “Did Pepsi Really Beat Coke in Blind Taste Tests?”
- In the 1980s, Pepsi conducted 3000 blind household taste tests and found that the majority of the people in the tests preferred Pepsi over Coca-Cola.
- Pepsi then launched a national public campaign called “Pepsi Challenge”, bringing pop-up taste tests to malls and stores and filming TV commercials showing people taking the Pepsi Challenge and finding that they surprisingly preferred the Pepsi sample over the Coke sample.
- This led to claims that Pepsi had “won the Cola Wars”.
- However, these taste tests were not scientifically valid for many reasons.
- People often prefer sweeter products in small quantities, in this case, for the first few sips. This does not affect long-term preferences.
- Other factors also affect the outcome of such taste tests, like temperature, labeling, and the order of samples, and even the number printed on the sample.
- Since people also buy with their eyes, blind tests don’t reflect real-world purchasing decisions where packaging and branding matter.
- Despite the momentary celebration over Pepsi’s triumph, Coca-Cola remained the market leader.
- Pepsi’s sales did spike temporarily but Coca-Cola drinkers eventually returned to their preferred brand.
- Pepsi may have been remiss in not continuing to advertise heavily when sales started to slump again.
- The history of soda advertising shows that advertising has the most power when sales are struggling, not when a product is already doing well.
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