eer, the Battle of sparkling gold that – if we are to believe the advertising campaigns – forges friendships and colours evenings. But what is hidden behind the familiar labels of Heineken, Amstel and Grolsch?
For many people, beer is just beer. But we all know that one friend who swears by one specific brand of beer and will not take a sip on principle if something else is served at a birthday party. Because that beer is of course ‘undrinkable’. If you subject this person to a blindfolded taste test, you will immediately notice the power of branding. Without a brand, little remains of the previously so strong taste preference.
To a greater or lesser extent, our brains hold all sorts of judgements about different beer brands. We are only aware of some of these judgements. The majority of these brand associations originate subconsciously. And yet such subconscious associations can certainly influence taste perception and our behaviour.
But how exactly are the major beer brands in the Netherlands perceived? To find out, we recently investigated the unconscious brand associations of Amstel, Heineken and Grolsch using neuromarketing research. In this article, I share the results and answer the question: what do the differences in unconscious associations between these beer brands mean?
In short: taste is just taste, right?
When we talk about beer brands, we often hear that it is a matter of taste. And that is true. But did you know that our taste is influenced in all sorts of ways? What you like or don’t like is determined by pakistan email list 2.5 million contact leads all sorts of factors, including the unconscious associations you have with something.
One experiment where this became unmistakably clear was the ‘Coca-Cola versus Pepsi challenge’. In this challenge it turns out that when people taste the drinks of these two brands, 75% choose Coca-Cola. While when people taste blind – so without the brand visible – the majority suddenly chooses Pepsi!
The conclusion? Brands, and the associations with those brands, have a considerable influence on our actual taste experience. That is precisely the reason why a positive brand image is so incredibly important in the beer world. Let’s take a look at the unconscious associations with three well-known beer brands from the Netherlands.
Brand associations are largely unconscious
The more strongly two associations are connected in our the power of stories in 2024: these are the 5 storytelling trends brain (for example, ‘Coca Cola’ and ‘happiness’), the faster we can process them simultaneously. This is due to the simple principle ‘What fires together, wires together’. Neurons that repeatedly fire together become wired alb directory together.
Association tests such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and Intuitive Response Test (IRT) aim to make this processing speed measurable, so that you can quantitatively measure unconscious associations. Unravel recently used this test to map the brand image of Dutch beer brands.