Surely they should have worked this one out by now?

Every 18 months or so someone does a daytime TV taste test between Pepsi and Coke, they usually line them up against the store brands and guess what? The store brands usually win as they are half the price and that, friends, makes for a much better story

But sometimes Pepsi wins a taste test. Then so did Coke. How can that happen? Coke tastes better than Pepsi, and Pepsi tastes better than Coke.

What this shows, which we already knew, is that there is not much difference between Coke and Pepsi. Some people prefer Coke, some (like me)prefer Pepsi...yeah they are a client but first preference is for a can of Pepsi Max. However i would hazard a guess that most people do not have a preference.

But, I am mystified. Why do they even conduct taste tests? Do people really decide on what they drink based on other people's preferences? Don't they try both, and then decide for themselves? Or are people really sheep who will follow other sheep? That must be it.

By the way, they are probably cheating on those taste tests. They probably report only favorable taste tests, and throw out the unfavorable ones. See How To Lie With Statistics - by Darrell Huff (one of the best books ever written).