The first experiment was a taste test using diet Pepsi and diet coke; 8 cups of each drink were issued to 4 girls and 4 boys to make the test as fair as possible. Before trying the drink, everyone had said that they preferred coke to Pepsi, yet when trying the drinks anonymously, everyone sided with the diet Pepsi over the diet coke, thinking that the Pepsi was the coke. This experiment shows that maybe people think they prefer the coke simply because of how they perceive the brand.
The second experiment was done with 3 different types of chocolate. The team leading this experiment were looking for the nicest chocolate in order from best to worst as well as the order of pricing. Because Britain is a nation with a very sweet tooth, it was not difficult for all the tasters to say not only the order from best to worse, but could also identify the brand of each chocolate. The 3 types were Cadbury’s Galaxy and a supermarket value brand. This shows that the brands have evolved their product to stand out from all others, not only through taste, but also through shape (with galaxy’s recent shape of chocolate being very distinct).
The next experiment was run by Laura and I. We had a sheet of paper with various images on; all of which could be interpreted as different images dependent on the viewer’s perception. The first image was of the image in my above blog...do you see the young or old lady? Out of 8 participants, 4 boys 4 girls, 7 of them saw the young lady with only one girl seeing the older lady. We also had an image of an elephant with a deceptive number of legs. All four boys simply said 4 legs without thinking or analysing the image, whereas all 4 girls spent a lot of time trying to decipher each leg, all coming up with an answer of 5. This adds to my theory from the last blog that males think in a much more simple way than females...in the real world elephants have 4 legs, therefore the image must have 4 legs. Some of the images proved a varied mixture of perceptions, with up to 4 different images seen. This experiment helped to show how subjective image perceptions are, and therefore how careful advertisers have to be in order to get their target audience to perceive the message portrayed in the way they want them to.
The next experiment was to try and identify various shampoos through smell and touch. The girls taking part in the test were overall the best at identifying certain shampoos such as dove and L’Oreal elvive, this was partly through smell and through feeling the shape of the bottles. Another shampoo that was put into a stereotype by all participants was a shampoo for males; this was identified by the type of smell and through the masculine shape of the bottle. Again this test shows the importance of how you market your product, Dove has done this well as almost all of the girls taking part identified it through its unique curved bottle.
The final experiment was done with men’s aftershave. There were 3 bottles disguised and lettered A B and C, the aim being to state the favourite through to least favourite and in order of price range. The results showed that the least likes scent was in fact the most expensive and the most liked scent was the cheapest. This result was consistent from all participants. One of the brands was also identified through scent alone, showing how important it is for marketers to get their product right before it becomes associated with a brand that it could potentially destroy if it was done badly.
1 comment:
Another great write up. I like the way you analyse the results of all the tests - this is a good habit to get into
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