Coke-vs-Pepsi neuromarketing: Functional MRI brain scans show that Coca Cola's advertising and branding has been far more succesful than Pepsi's in creating consistent preferences for their beverage.

The experimental design enabled the researchers to discover the specific brain regions activated when the subjects used only taste information versus when they also had brand identification. While the researchers found no influence of brand knowledge for Pepsi, they found a dramatic effect of the Coke label on behavioral preference. The brand knowledge of Coke both influenced their preference and activated brain areas including the "dorsolateral prefrontal cortex" and the hippocampus. Both of these areas are implicated in modifying behavior based on emotion and affect. In particular, wrote the researchers, their findings suggest "that the hippocampus may participate in recalling cultural information that biases preference judgments."

I predict this is just the beginning of the neuromarketing cola wars. (Via Boing Boing.)