Draft 1, Is It Worth It? Brands and Taste

This topic submitted by Kelly Bush, Hannah Frederick, Josh Marcus, Nicole Santelli, Alison Stanton (stantoam@muohio.edu) at 10:20 pm on 10/18/01. Additions were last made on Friday, April 19, 2002. Section: Cummins

Is it worth it? Brands and Taste

Kelly Bush, Hannah Frederick, Josh Marcus, Nicole Santelli, Alison Stanton

Abstract

Does a national brand name cause people to believe that it is a better tasting product? This is relevant to society because it effects the way that individual households spend money. If a generic product is indistinguishable from a national brand except by additional expense, than over time it will impact other family financial decisions that are conceivably more important than drinking from the right label. The scientific relevance of our question is whether one brand, and therefore the implied taste of that brand, is more appealing to one sex or the other. We also wish to analyze whether one sex is more accurate in their own predictions of which product they rate as tasting better.

Introduction

Our purpose is to discover if name brands cause people to have a predetermined opinion that the name brand colas will taste better than generic brands. Our group thinks that people will believe that the name brand product will taste better, but when they are tested without knowing what they are trying they will not be able to decipher between different colas. We plan to discover if people are paying more money for the name brand, when they could be buying the generic brand colas that provide the same taste. We are also interested in discovering how advertising and brand names cause people to favor one drink over another when there is really no difference.

The project idea stemmed from one of our group members wanted to know whether it was worth the money to buy the more expensive, national brands of water. From there this research project developed into also testing brand name labels on other products. Finally we decided to focus on cola taste and brands to the exclusion of water brands. Through our research we hope to gain a broader knowledge of the effects of advertising on the consuming populace. We also want to discover if sex and taste is a reasonable avenue for further study by our introductory question of whether there is a difference in taste preferences between the sexes.

Relevance

The reason behind our research is simple. We want to know if the advertisers have the advantage because of the name/label of the product pushes consumers to buy it, or does taste truly matter.

Many taste tests have been developed and implemented across the United States. The most famous one being Coke vs. Pepsi, which over time has proven but one thing, people know the difference between Coke and Pepsi by taste alone and are very loyal to their drink of choice.

Even though there is a distinct taste difference between Coke and Pepsi there isn't as big a difference between Sam's Choice and Coke. As well as a few other, off shoot brands that come very close to either Pepsi or Coke. This is where we will figure out whether it is the taste that brings in customers or if it's the label alone.

The real world relevance is if our experiment shows that people for example rate Coke as the best cola, but when they actually taste the beverage they rate Sam's Choice as the best, we will know that the label is what counts. This would help industries in the way that if they can find the formula to make Cola like Sam's Choice does, which is possibly cheaper to make, but yet keep the Coke label on it they will make a lot larger profit then they are currently making. This happens often when someone finds a good quality product and put that product name on another less quality product. Like in the movie Tommy Boy, a much larger company wants to by out the small brake company of Callahan auto parts. The Larger company doesn't want the brake pads all they want is the name. A name can go a lot farther then the product that's in it. That is what we believe we'll be proving.

Company can warp people's minds into thinking that one tastes better. Bigger advertising budgets for companies plays with consumers pocketbooks. Money that could be spent on, say school supplies or charitable donations, is instead spent on having the right name on a container.

Our studies contribution to the greater base of human knowledge will include whether the consuming populace contributes more to corporate profits simply because they spend more money promoting their product.

Materials and Methods

We will stand outside of Alexander Dining Hall on a weekend(Saturday and Sunday) during the allotted time for dinner. We will get 50 responses each day, 25 female and 25 male.

In order to make the experiment statistically sound we will have the participants taste the samples in a random order in order to negate after-tastes. In addition we will take female and male participants in the order that they come(randomly) instead of alternating the sex of each subject.

We are interested in collecting the information of our participants' sex because we want to analysis whether one product tastes better to one sex over the other. Also, to see if one sex is more accurate in their ratings of how they believe they will rate the tested products. Taste tester selection: We will take anyone who agrees to do the study until we reach our maximum number of participants for the day. We will counteract people coming back because we are doing this on Western campus only where we know almost everyone. Testers will know ahead of time, which products they are tasting in order to avoid any rare allergic reactions and because they will know that they are tasting what they have been asked to rate only in a random order.

Procedures :
1) Recruit participants going into Alexander Dining Hall by asking them if they will participate in an experiment studying the perceived and actual tastes of colas.

2) Receiving a positive answer, we will give them their data sheet and ask them to rate how they think that the selected four brands will taste in order from 1 to 4(one being the highest) and their sex.

3) We will tell them that they will not have a second chance to taste the colas. We will then have them taste the colas, in the order that is next in our selection of possible combinations and place them in order from left to right in the order that they think they taste best(leftmost being better than rightmost). The cups will have letters on the bottom to tell us which cola was which so that the tester can record the information once the participant has been excused.

Our most important material will be the sodas that we use. They will include Coke, Pepsi, RC, Big K, and Sam’s Choice. We will also require 250 paper Dixie cups per day of testing. We will require writing utensils for participants, something hard to write on the data sheet with, such as a clipboard. We will also require a sharpie to write the letter of the cola on the bottom of the cups. Library References are also important materials, especially when we deal with advertising.

The class will be involved in our study by being our test subjects. Before conducting our tests in front of Alexander Dining Hall, we will run our tests on our classmates to insure that our data sheet is optimized for recording data and to provide ourselves with peer review before we conduct our tests so we do not have to go back.

Data Sheet

Data Collection Sheet

After the proposal is approved, the group will take the first day of peer teaching, October 23 to explain our project to the class and conduct our first round of tests. The results of testing our classmates will not be counted in our statistical data. The group will then pick a weekend to conduct our tests outside of Alexander Dining Hall. The next step is to analysis the data collected and apply the readings that we find online and in peer-reviewed journals to the responses we have. Then we will work on our presentation for December 3rd and turn in the project.

Results

There are multiple ways to analyze the data we will collect. Here are a few of the comparisons we will run. Compare: pre rated to actually taste rated, ratings of how they are pre rated to how much they cost, ratings of how they taste to how much they cost, ratings of how they taste to how much that company advertises, which sodas are pre rated as being the best to how much they advertise. We will also see if one sex prefers one soda over the other and if one sex is more accurate in their pre-ratings to taste ratings than the other.

Literature Citations

Kim, Chung and Anne Lavack and Margo Smith. "Consumer Evaluation of Vertical Brand Extensions and Core Brands." Journal of Business Research Vol. 52, Issue 3. June 2001. pp. 211-22. OhioLink. Miami University - Oxford, Ohio. 18 Oct. 2001. < http://journals.ohiolink.edu/cgi-bin/sciserv.pl?collection=journals&journal=01482963&issue=v52i0003&article=211_ceovbeacb>

DelVecchio, Devon. "Consumer perceptions of private label quality: the role of product category characteristics and consumer use of heuristics." Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services Vol. 8, Issue 5. September 2001. pp. 239-249. OhioLink Miami University - Oxford, Ohio. < http://journals.ohiolink.edu/cgi-bin/sciserv.pl?collection=journals&journal=09696989&issue=v08i0005&article=239_cpoplqcacuoh>

Batra, Rajeev and Indrajit Sinha. "Consumer-level Factors Moderating the Success of Private Label Brands." Journal of Retailing Vol. 76, Issue 2. September 2000. pp. 175-191. OhioLink. Miami University - Oxford, Ohio. < http://journals.ohiolink.edu/cgi-bin/sciserv.pl?collection=journals&journal=00224359&issue=v76i0002&article=175_cfmtsoplb>

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Zaichkowsky, Judith and Neil Simpson. "The Effect of Experience with a Brand Imitator on the Original Brand." Marketing Letters Vol. 7 Issue 1. January 1996. pp. 31-39. OhioLink. Miami University - Oxford, Ohio. < http://journals.ohiolink.edu/cgi-bin/sciserv.pl?collection=journals&journal=09230645&issue=v07i0001&article=31_teoewabiotob>

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