The folks at Coke were already concerned that Pepsi had been slowly gaining market share. Then Pepsi launched The Pepsi Challenge and all hell broke loose.
Coke thought the taste tests might have been rigged. But, when they conducted their own taste tests, the results were the same. Holy crap! They had to do something.
So, New Coke was born, reformulated to be sweeter, mellower and less carbonated—like Pepsi. Because that’s what research showed cola drinkers wanted.
As we all know, New Coke failed. Horribly. Expensively.
Because the taste tests had tested the wrong thing.
It was realized, too late, that what people experience from a sip or two of a beverage is not the same as when they drink a whole can. The tongue starts tasting different aspects of the beverage, and the receptors send different signals to the brain.
The lesson is to make sure to test the right thing, to ask the right questions.
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