Criticism
In his book, Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell presents evidence that suggests Pepsi's success over Coca-Cola in the "Pepsi Challenge" is a result of the flawed nature of the "sip test" method. His research shows that tasters will generally prefer the sweeter of two beverages based on a single sip, even if they prefer a less sweet beverage over the course of an entire can. Just because a taster prefers a single sip of a sweeter beverage, doesn't mean he or she would prefer to have an entire case of it at home.
Popular sources criticize the so-called Pepsi challenge for the methods used. When cola taste samples include labels of Coke or Pepsi the preference for Pepsi is reversed. Much of the difference in preference of Pepsi or Coca-Cola is accounted for by labels and not taste. When the preference in blind tests is compared to tests where cups are labeled with arbitrary labels (e.g., S or L) or brand names, the ratings of preference change (Woolfolk, Castellan, & Brooks, 1983). Scientific findings do support a perceptible difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but not between Pepsi and RC Cola (Pronko & Herman, 1950).
The band Negativland lampooned Pepsi and the Pepsi challenge on their 1997 album Dispepsi. Several Pepsi commercials were sampled from the era of the Pepsi Challenge featuring Bill Cosby and Michael J Fox.
Read more about this topic: Pepsi Challenge
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
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“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)