Probably Not the Best Lager in the World: Effect of Brands on Consumers’ Preferences in a Beer Tasting Experiment

We investigate the role and impact of exposure to brands in consumers’ evaluations of lager beers, and explore its relation with exposure to intrinsic information. The first objective is to study the ability of young consumers to identify their preferred beer. The second is to explore the role played by brands, under two distinct perspectives: i) whether the effect of exposure to brands is either generalized or specific to preferred beers; ii) the ability of brands to induce perception of sensory characteristics. We propose a two-stage beer tasting experiment, exploiting information both on within-subject differences across different stages, and between-subjects differences across treatments. In each stage, participants’ evaluations for three beers was elicited using an incentive-compatible mechanism. The first stage was a blind tasting, while in the second stage beers were presented together with the bottles. Our main results are the following. Consumers seem unable to identify their preferred lager beer in a blind taste. Brands affect consumers’ evaluations: after brands are revealed, average evaluations change. Although they are stronger on most preferred brands, brand effects are generalized. Finally, extrinsic information on brands also affects and induces the description of sensorial perceptions of intrinsic characteristics of beers.