The Pepsi Paradox: A review

The Pepsi Paradox refers to the observation that Pepsi is preferred to Coke in blind taste tests, despite Coke being regarded as the more successful brand. We begin by describing the origins of the Pepsi Paradox. We then outline a neural hypothesis for why it occurs. Next, we carefully assess the published behavioural studies related to the Pepsi Paradox, and on people's ability to distinguish colas by taste. We conclude that the existing research has failed to provide sufficient evidence for the existence of the Pepsi Paradox. In fact, there does not even seem to be a consistent taste preference for either beverage in the reviewed studies.