Perception is not always based in reality, and therefore isn’t always rational.
“Sensation transference,” for example, happens when product packaging changes consumers’ experience of a product. Coca-Cola dealt with repercussions of the phenomenon in 2012 when some customers said that the soda tasted differently when packaged in a special white can with polar bears. The soda recipe, Coca-Cola assured, was unchanged.
While Coca-Cola had to spend time recovering from their well-intentioned fundraising effort for an endangered species, perception goes the other way as well.
Shannon Burton 