Ask this question to a caveman; living without aggressive marketing campaigns, larger-than-life billboards and catchy ad jingles, he will say “I don’t care, they taste the bloody same”. It’s true. They are chemically very identical drinks. But what makes people choose one over the other?
Neuroscientists at Tuft’s university in a paper in
Neuron investigated the influence of the brand image on behavioral choice and brain response when they exercised their choice between Coke® and Pepsi®.
Now. It will be wrong to assume that the cavemen didn’t have any food or drink preference (I am sure they hated broccoli as well) but they were based on biological reasons like - gives more energy or strengthens the immune systems. But in the modern world factors like social context, mental state, expectation, cultural influence etc play a role in choosing ones food or drink, apart from the sensory aspects of taste and smell.
Scientists have used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a technique that detects which area of the brain is being used when the subject is performing a particular task.) to study which region of the brain is activated when the subjects prefer one drink to another, with or without a brand cue (like the Coke logo).
They found that a part of the brain called Ventro Medial Prefrontal Cortex (VMPFC) was responsible when the subjects chose the drink based only on sensory information that is, when the subjects were asked to choose drinks on unmarked cups. This brain area is known to be responsible for basic appetitive aspect of reward.
In the next task the subjects were asked to choose between Coke® or Pepsi®, but this time one of the cups indicated what drink there was (with a large bottle of Coke or Pepsi with the prominent logo next to the cup). This biased their preference. Subjects chose Coke more often than Pepsi!! (The marketing department of Coke has a scientific reason to feel superior to their counterparts in Pepsi).
Also, different brain areas were activated, like hippocampus, Dorso-Lateral Pre Frontal Cortex (DLPFC) and midbrain. The DLPFC is hypothesized to employ affective information in biasing behavior and the hippocampus is used to recall cultural information to bias our judgment. (which fits nicely into our story).
Scientists say that there are two separate neural pathways in the brain for food preference. One pathway determines preference by the sensory aspect of the food like smell and taste, and the other is determined by cultural information which has a strong component of memory attached to it. And when it comes to a preference that has a strong cultural aspect also, both the pathways interact and result in bias in preference.
Behind every seemingly unsolvable problem lies a simple solution, attainable only to the mildly alcoholic. After trying 20 years to press birch wood into speakers without splitting them (apparently birch wood has brilliant acoustics) JVC has stumbled upon a rather simple solution. Soak in Sake. Yes they soaked the wood in tubs of sake. This process has made the wood malleable so they can be pressed into cone shaped speakers.
