THE PEPSI CHALLENGE: How Neuroscience Discovered the Hidden Truth

28 Jul THE PEPSI CHALLENGE: How Neuroscience Discovered the Hidden Truth

In 1975, many participants were invited for a blind taste test between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and to no surprise people chose Pepsi, as they found Pepsi is sweeter; however in 2003, Neuroscientist Read Montague raised a question, if most of the people prefer Pepsi why its sales are not dominating the market.

To get to the bottom of this, he called up some consumers and hooked them to the MRI scan to track brain activities. Half of the participants said they preferred Pepsi, his team found that a brain region called ventral putamen, associated with seeking reward, was active when people drank their favorite drink.

However things changed when consumers were told what they were drinking, the ratio shifted to 3:1 in favor of coke. This time they noticed a different part of the brain was active, medial prefrontal cortex which associates with higher thinking.

At that point he concluded that brain was recalling ideas from Coke’s commercials, and the emotions attached with the brand were overriding the product’s actual quality. In 2004, he published his findings, and concept of Neuromarketing caught the public eye.

EVOLUTION-

In today’s market the use of devices like EEG & Eye tracking devices have reduced the research cost while providing similar results as that of MRI scans.

EEG devices measure specific type of brain activities through which marketers can learn why consumer makes the decisions they do and what parts of brain make them do so, and that too without asking consumers. Marketers are using these techniques before launching the products, advertisement, billboards, mobile apps.

Using eye tracking, marketers can locate design elements that don’t work; like the ones people have trouble reading or that they simply don’t get excited about. Once they have this information they can modify the pack, billboard etc and launch it when they believe it is ready to catch the eye.

ที่มา: https://medium.com/@neurosensum/the-pepsi-challenge-how-neuroscience-discovered-the-hidden-truth-e5da7997f046