Branded

Preference for Coke vs. Pepsi isn’t just a matter of taste. Knowledge of which one is being drunk (a non-blind taste test) actually produces different MRI-traced brain reactions, as folks make certain associations with the different brands.

The preference for Coke versus Pepsi is not only a matter for the tongue to decide, Samuel McClure and his colleagues have found. Brain scans of people tasting the soft drinks reveal that knowing which drink they’re tasting affects their preference and activates memory-related brain regions that recall cultural influences. Thus, say the researchers, they have shown neurologically how a culturally based brand image influences a behavioral choice.

These choices are affected by perception, wrote the researchers, because “there are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans that consume the drinks.”

Even though scientists have long believed that such cultural messages affect taste perception, there had been no direct neural probes to test the effect, wrote the researchers. Findings about the effects of such cultural information on the brain have important medical implications, they wrote.

[…] The experimental design enabled the researchers to discover the specific brain regions activated when the subjects used only taste information versus when they also had brand identification. While the researchers found no influence of brand knowledge for Pepsi, they found a dramatic effect of the Coke label on behavioral preference. The brand knowledge of Coke both influenced their preference and activated brain areas including the “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex” and the hippocampus. Both of these areas are implicated in modifying behavior based on emotion and affect. In particular, wrote the researchers, their findings suggest “that the hippocampus may participate in recalling cultural information that biases preference judgments.”

Looks like all those advertising dollars actually pay off …

(via BoingBoing)