Not terribly surprising, but another instance of the power of branding &
advertising to influence preference. If you want to see the table with
results from the informal experiment the writer conducted, click the link at
the bottom
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Pepsi vs Coke: Difference in taste is mostly in your head 


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.

[to see table, click link at bottom of page]

It looks like Jimmy was able to distinguish between each of the three drinks
in the first round. He was the only one to correctly determine all three
drinks in the first round and to identify Coke as the third drink. Everybody
else missed at least two choices in the first round and James missed all
three.

The second round was a little more interesting. Everyone except Kim
correctly determined that the first drink was generic cola, and Liz and
Catie correctly determined all three drinks. Jimmy's confidence failed him
during the second round and he missed two.

It would be interesting to expand this experiment and see the results over
ten rounds.

Why was nobody able to reliably determine what they were drinking? I think
it's probably because the different colas are essentially the same drink. An
article in the Independent contained some interesting insight into this:

 

	The experiment, a laboratory-controlled version of the famous Pepsi
Challenge, revealed that flavour seems to be the last thing that consumers
rely on in their preference for Pepsi or Coca-Cola.

	When asked to taste blind, they showed no preference. However, when
the participants were shown company logos before they drank, the Coke label,
the more famous of the two, had a dramatic impact: three-quarters of the
tasters declared they preferred Coke.

In other words, seeing the brand label is how your brain will perceive the
flavor. The difference in taste is all in your head. And for those who are
still adamant that there's a huge difference between Pepsi and Coke? They've
just been brainwashed by advertising.

source: http://www.fraudwasteabuse.com/2007/04/pepsi-vs-coke.html