Buying In - (Page xvi) xvi rob walker But why, really, did I feel so strongly about a brand of sneaker—any brand of sneaker? I know why I rejected the swoosh. In Air Force 1’s, I’d feel like a brand zombie. But what I suddenly couldn’t reconcile was my belief that I could project my individuality through some other brand. So when I talk about this book being inspired by the disconnect between what the experts say and how we really behave, I have to include myself. Not long after my Chuck Taylor epiphany, scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine conducted an interesting experiment. They revisited one of the eternal thirst-quenching questions of our time: Coke or Pepsi? In an initial round of tests, they basically re-created the famous Pepsi Challenge, which was a blind taste test. They found a slight preference for Pepsi based on taste alone, but it was so close that it was practically a draw; essentially, when the two beverages squared off solely on the basis of intrinsic sensory appeal, they were found to be about the same. This makes sense, given that (as the Baylor researchers pointed out) the ingredients are extremely similar. The next round of tests, however, included something else: “cultural information.” In this instance, the cultural information was branding. The subjects now chose between a clearly labeled drink (Coke for some subjects, Pepsi for others) and an unlabeled one. Properly labeled, Pepsi again finished in a tie with its unknown competitor. But properly labeled, Coke was the decisive favorite against its mystery rival. The Coke brand, evidently, had something that the Pepsi brand did not have— something that people liked. (In both cases, subjects were told that the unlabeled drink might be Pepsi or it might be Coke; in reality, the labeled drink was competing against itself. Thus
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