By Steve Rivkin

That’s the conclusion from a study of peanut butter and consumer choice. Brand names taste better.

The details were first reported years ago in The Journal of Consumer Research. They resurfaced in a book by psychologist Gerg Gigerenzer about the “intelligence of the unconscious” (Gut Feelings, Viking-Penguin).

The study gave consumers a choice between three jars of peanut butter. In a pretest using blind taste tests, 60% of the time consumers identified one brand as having significantly higher quality.

Then the researchers put labels on the jars and tested another group of participants. One label was a well-known, heavily-advertised national brand. The other two labels were brands the participants had never heard of before.

The higher-quality peanut butter went into one of the jars with an unfamiliar label. Would the same percentage still choose the best-tasting spread?

Nope. This time, 73% chose a lower-quality product with the well-known brand name. Only 20% chose the high-quality product in the unfamiliar jar.

Researchers cite similar results among beer drinkers, using blind taste tests.

The takeaways:

• A brand name is a promise of how you will perform.
• A brand name can differentiate you from others in your category.
• Brand name recognition can have more influence than taste perception.