Is Coca-Cola still unique and recognizable with eyes blinded ?

It is unquestionable that the majority of people are able to identify a Coca-Cola product only with the shape of its bottle. But what happens when it comes to identifying a Coca-Cola only with the taste of it? To answer the question, we asked 5 people with different profiles to taste 4 different types of Cola: Coca-Cola, Look Cola, Freeway Cola, and a Cola distributed by Carrefour.

5 different people interviewed

In order to see if most people can also identify Coca-Cola only by tasting the soda, we have decided to interview 5 people with different profiles.

1st person interviewed: it’s a woman, she’s 23 and she is a student.

2nd person interviewed: it’s a man, he’s 37 and he is working in a bank.

3rd person interviewed: it’s a woman, she’s 64 and she’s retired.

4th person interviewed: it’s a woman, she’s 31 and she’s a housewife.

5th person interviewed: it’s a man, he’s 44 and he’s working in a restaurant.

For this test, they know that they will taste 4 different Cola, with their eyes blinded and they have to guess which one is Coca-Cola but also which one is their favorite Cola. They did the test separately to not influence each other.

The result

Out of 5 people, 3 have found the right answer with eyes blinded. After the test, we have decided to ask them some questions to understand their responses more.

The 1st person interviewed is drinking often Coca-Cola so she’s a real customer of Coca-Cola.

The 2nd person interviewed told us that he’s not consuming a lot of Coca-Cola but when he was younger, he was drinking more Coca-Cola. His favorite Cola during the test was Look Cola because he thinks there is less sugar compared to Coca.

The 3rd person interviewed was not able to find which one was Coca-Cola because she’s not drinking sodas in general due to her health. She answered Freeway Cola and it’s her favorite Cola of the 4 sodas.

The 4th person interviewed was not able to find which one was Coca-Cola too. She’s not buying a lot of sodas because she has 3 children. Look Cola was her favorite of the 4 beverages.

The 5th person interviewed was able to find the right answer because he’s working in a restaurant so he drinks quite often Coca-Cola and that’s why it’s his favorite Cola.

After those observations, we can say that is more difficult to recognize a Coca-Cola only with its taste. Of course, its taste is still unique but for people who don’t drink a lot of Coca-Cola, it is not easy. It is also due to the fact that competitors which have created some new versions of Cola worked hard to recreate a Cola similar. We also say that it can also depend on the habits of people but also lifestyle. For example, the mother cannot recognize Coca-Cola because she’s not buying it for her kids or her family.

Even if this test was only with 5 people, we can see that first, a profile of consumers is not enough to say that all these types of consumers will recognize Coca-Cola by tasting them blinded. Secondly, if we want to go in-depth in this experience, we will have to look more at consumer habits and their lifestyle to identify a category of consumers which can more easily find which Cola is a Cola-Cola. Finally, 3 out 5 people find the right answer so it is still the majority of people and we can see that only by having different profiles and not knowing their habits and tastes, some of them easily recognize Coca-Cola.