As marketing affects people and their solutions: experiment with Pepsi and Coca-Cola

A social experiment shows how marketing affects people, change our choices and preferences. In the late 70-ies. XX century corporation PepsiCo, the beverage maker Pepsi, has launched a specific campaign. She is known worldwide as the "Pepsi challenge" and was based on a social experiment. With it, the company wanted to demonstrate that the public prefers to drink «Pepsi» more than «Coca-Cola» - brand of arch-rival.

In many large cities have been established public places for tasting, where people could try both carbonated beverage, but the choice was carried out blindly. That is the first experiment participants drank a glass with a drink, then another. After that, he should answer a simple question: "which one drinks more than he liked."
As expected in the company, most people answered that they liked Pepsi more. Of course, there is taken care of to the survey results were distributed to a wide range of people, and even went to the remotest corner of the planet.

Effective Marketing: Coca-Cola reaction
Coca-Cola answer is not long in coming. Their indignation knew no bounds. The staff then decided on a new public campaign, which, of course, came from a completely opposite conditions and has been developed in the course of hard work on the new drink.

And what do you think? During the decision-making people in the majority chose Coca-Cola! The contrast between these two events at once rushed into my eyes. Or Pepsi marketers distorted the results of their research or this sinned Coca-Cola. And that is another company could not be right.
Independent investigation of events with Pepsi and Coca-Cola
It seems that this mystery had heard fanatical researchers drinks that were guided by pure curiosity and do their own investigation. The goal was to determine: which of the two makes the audience prefers more?
Introduced some innovations. While study participants drank one or another drink, their brain was studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging. It allows you to determine which groups of neurons in the brain are activated by a particular person during the execution of an action. In our case, we are talking about tasting the dark and frothy fluid - Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
Influence of Coca-Cola taste in our brain
The researchers discovered that when people drink and the Pepsi, and Coca-Cola, in their brain activated that is called the "pleasure center". It involves specific brain areas responsible for pleasure which we experience during a pleasant and joyful moments. We are talking about the reception of soda, and other situations of different nature: sex, watching your favorite TV series, reading exciting books, great food, smoking marijuana.
It is interesting that when participants were told what brand of beverage they are now tested, the picture was quite different - activated a different brain region. It was called the prefrontal cortex, which is located in the temporal region.

What is the function of the prefrontal cortex?
We know that this part of the brain - anatomical basis of various mental processes of a higher order. One of them - is the formation of concepts, management of intellectual functions. Simply put, when the participants tried to drink without knowing its brand in the brain activate the
pleasure center", supported by the pleasant taste sensations from the respective receptors. And when they called mark, then "it includes" another area - the prefrontal cortex. In other words, he activated an area of ​​the brain that stores the presentation and knowledge of a particular brand, that is, its concept.
Do not underestimate one detail. Prefrontal neurons were more "diligent" when tested drinking Coca-Cola compared with when they tried Pepsi drink. On the screen was displayed higher activity of the cerebral cortex when the study participants were aware that they taste the drink brand number one in the world.
The result is that the only difference between the two advertising campaigns was the fact that Coca-Cola staff informed participants about how the drink is poured into a glass. Moreover, they even logos were demonstrated!

But the "call the Pepsi» is characterized by the fact that the participants were evaluated only drink to his taste and did not know what kind of mark they test. In this case, the choice was based solely on the gustatory pleasure that is felt people.
As marketing affects people and their taste
What this leads us? The first is to say that for most people a tasty drink Pepsi than Coca-Cola. Second, when the buyer knows that drink, he will give a choice in favor of Coca-Cola because of the famous and influential brand. Incredibly, only one commercial brand can have a weight that even affects sensory pleasure we experience from a certain product consumption. Only one brand is able to make us sensual pleasure and radically change our decisions, get to choose the option that brings us joy is less than the other.
When the experiment participants expected that they will drink Coca-Cola, the soft drink they seemed more delicious than that of competitors. Conversely, when such representation they had not opened space for sensory pleasure, not caused by anything. It was based solely on taste. As a result, he won the Pepsi. Strange but true.
All commercial brands have a certain power over us. Another proof of how marketing affects people. This takes a certain value of a share of our brain. Advertising companies are aware of this for many years. Their main goal - to make a particular brand has a much greater
significance than the other for the consumer. This is achieved by an endless "information noise" in all possible media and special methods of advertising exposure. That's what Coca-Cola knows and is doing very well.

Based on materials: psicologiaymente.net