Choong Whan Park USC On Why We Never Forget Certain Flavors: The Psychology of Taste and Brand Memory

Think about the flavor of something you loved as a child. Perhaps it was a particular ice cream, a favorite soft drink, or a dish prepared by someone in your family. Years may have passed since you last tasted it, yet the experience remains remarkably familiar. One bite can remind you of a summer afternoon, a family celebration, or a place you haven't visited in decades.

Why does this happen? And why do certain foods and beverages become so deeply connected to our memories that we continue seeking them out throughout our lives?

The work of Professor Choong Whan Park at USC offers a valuable perspective on this relationship. His discussion of brand memory and sensory experiences highlights how memorable brands connect with consumers through meaningful benefits, consistent experiences, and emotional associations.

Taste provides a fascinating example of these principles because food is rarely just food. What we eat and drink becomes intertwined with the people we know, the places we visit, and the moments that help define our lives.

For food and beverage companies, understanding this connection reveals an important distinction: a product can satisfy someone's appetite, but a familiar flavor can become part of their personal history.

A Single Bite Can Bring Back an Entire Childhood

Imagine walking into a small bakery while traveling in an unfamiliar city. You notice a pastry that looks remarkably similar to something your grandmother used to make. Out of curiosity, you purchase one.

The first bite surprises you.

Suddenly, you remember sitting at a kitchen table, waiting impatiently for the pastry to cool. Perhaps you recall the sound of someone moving around the kitchen, a particular conversation, or the excitement of a family gathering.

The pastry has not physically transported you anywhere. Yet the experience brings an earlier moment of your life vividly to mind.

Psychologists have studied this phenomenon through the relationship between sensory experiences and autobiographical memory. A 2023 review titled The Proust Effect: Scents, Food, and Nostalgia examined how smell and taste can evoke emotionally meaningful personal memories.

The researchers described how food-related nostalgia can be associated with familiarity, personal significance, and positive emotional experiences.

But something even more interesting is happening here.

The pastry matters partly because of the experience you associate with it. Another person could eat exactly the same food without experiencing anything remotely similar.

This reminds us that taste is deeply personal. The emotional meaning of a flavor is not necessarily contained in the ingredients themselves. It develops through the experiences surrounding their consumption.

For brands, that distinction is enormously important.

Why Flavor Is About More Than Your Tongue

We often describe taste as though it were a simple chemical response: something is sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or savory.

Yet the experience of flavor is much more complex.

Think about biting into a crisp apple. You experience sweetness and acidity, but also a distinctive aroma, a refreshing temperature, resistance from the skin, and the unmistakable crunch of the fruit.

These sensations combine to create what you recognize as the flavor of an apple.

In his 2015 paper, Multisensory Flavor Perception, Oxford psychologist Charles Spence examined how our experience of flavor depends on the integration of information from multiple senses.

This helps explain why presentation, texture, aroma, and even sound can change how we experience food.

Consider a familiar packet of potato chips. Part of the enjoyment may come from its seasoning, but the crispness also contributes to the experience. If the chips suddenly became soft, they might contain the same ingredients yet seem far less satisfying.

Similarly, a chocolate bar can have a recognizable flavor while also delivering a distinctive texture, aroma, and sensation as it melts.

Successful food brands therefore do more than develop appealing recipes. They create recognizable experiences through combinations of sensory characteristics.

When these characteristics remain familiar across repeated encounters, they may contribute to what consumers come to expect from the brand.

How Ordinary Foods Become Part of Our Identity

Consider the foods people associate with important stages of their lives.

A particular cereal might remind someone of childhood breakfasts before school. A familiar chocolate bar may evoke memories of trips with friends. A soft drink could be associated with family celebrations, sporting events, or weekend outings.

Over time, the meaning of these products can extend beyond their functional purpose.

They become reminders of who we were, where we came from, and which experiences mattered to us.

This is one reason food nostalgia is such a compelling subject for consumer psychology.

A 2025 study on food nostalgia and comfort explored how nostalgic food experiences relate to feelings of comfort and social connectedness. Its findings suggest that the comfort associated with nostalgic food can be partly explained by the sense of connection it evokes.

That connection may involve family, friendship, cultural heritage, or a particular period of life.

Consider someone who grew up eating a traditional dish prepared by their parents. As an adult living in another country, encountering the same flavors may create a powerful sense of familiarity and belonging.

The ingredients alone cannot explain the entire experience. The food carries personal and cultural meaning.

Food brands can become involved in similar associations when their products appear repeatedly during meaningful occasions.

However, those emotional connections cannot simply be manufactured through a clever slogan. They depend on how people actually experience the product over time.

Why Familiar Brands Can Feel Like Old Friends

Walk through a supermarket and consider how many products you recognize before reading their labels.

Perhaps you can imagine the flavor of a particular cola, a familiar candy, or the fries from a fast-food restaurant you have visited for years.

These products occupy recognizable positions in consumer memory.

For brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Starbucks, familiar flavors and food experiences can become part of a broader identity that consumers recognize across locations and occasions.

Think about the expectations someone brings to a favorite drink.

They may anticipate a particular sweetness, level of carbonation, mouthfeel, or overall flavor. They know what the first sip is supposed to be like.

That familiarity makes the experience predictable.

And predictability can be reassuring.

When someone is traveling, a familiar product may offer a small moment of continuity in an unfamiliar environment. The consumer is not necessarily choosing it because it represents the finest possible culinary experience. They may choose it because they know what to expect.

But this is where brand consistency becomes more interesting.

A familiar flavor may initially encourage repeat purchases, yet the reasons for continued preference can differ considerably between consumers.

One person buys the product out of habit. Another appreciates its reliability. Someone else associates it with personally meaningful memories.

These are different forms of consumer preference, and they should not be confused.

Recognizable flavor can help a brand become familiar. The experiences associated with that flavor can help make the brand personally meaningful.

The Surprising Power of Keeping Things the Same

Food companies constantly face pressure to innovate.

Consumers want healthier options, exciting new varieties, limited-edition products, and interesting combinations of ingredients. At the same time, many customers expect their favorite products to taste exactly as they remember.

This creates a fascinating tension.

A company may believe that changing a recipe will improve the product, while existing customers feel that something important has been lost.

Why might a seemingly small adjustment provoke such a strong reaction?

Because consumers are not always evaluating the revised product in isolation.

They are comparing it with a remembered experience.

A different sweetness, altered texture, or unfamiliar aftertaste can challenge the expectation that made the original product recognizable.

For someone whose attachment is rooted in years of personal experiences, the change may feel larger than the ingredient adjustment would suggest.

This does not mean food brands should avoid innovation. It means innovation should be informed by an understanding of which product characteristics consumers value most.

There may be opportunities to introduce new versions while preserving a familiar original. Seasonal offerings, regional variations, and limited-edition products can provide novelty without necessarily abandoning the qualities associated with an established product.

The strategic question becomes: which aspects of the experience are central to the brand's identity, and which can evolve?

Companies that understand this distinction are better positioned to balance innovation with continuity.

Can a Flavor Become a Family Tradition?

One of the most interesting opportunities for food brands arises when a product becomes part of a recurring family ritual.

Think about birthday cakes, holiday chocolates, weekend breakfasts, or the snacks purchased during annual vacations.

The emotional significance of these experiences often develops through repetition.

A family may purchase the same dessert every year because everyone expects it to appear at a particular celebration. Children grow up associating the product with the occasion, and the tradition may continue when they become adults.

In such circumstances, the brand can become woven into a family's shared history.

This is different from conventional advertising, which attempts to create awareness and persuade consumers to purchase a product.

A family ritual allows the product to acquire meaning through participation in real experiences.

Of course, not every tradition involves a commercial brand. Many of the strongest food memories concern homemade meals, local specialties, or recipes passed between generations.

That is precisely what makes the lesson valuable.

The emotional power comes from the human experience, not merely the presence of a branded package.

Food companies can support meaningful occasions by delivering products people genuinely enjoy and can depend on. They cannot guarantee that consumers will develop nostalgic attachment simply by presenting themselves as part of a family tradition.

The Difference Between Liking a Flavor and Loving a Brand

Someone may love the taste of a particular cookie without caring which company manufactures it.

Another consumer may repeatedly purchase a familiar product but switch immediately when a cheaper alternative appears.

A third person might remain strongly attached to a brand because its products are connected with important personal memories.

These examples demonstrate why taste preference and brand attachment are related but distinct.

Professor Choong Whan Park's work on emotional brand attachment offers a useful framework for understanding the difference.

A product can provide functional satisfaction through its quality, convenience, or appealing flavor. But a brand may acquire additional significance when consumers connect it with experiences that matter personally.

In food and beverages, taste can help support those connections because consumption is repeated, familiar, and frequently shared with other people.

Yet emotional attachment is not guaranteed by a successful recipe.

A brand must consistently deliver meaningful value, and consumers must have opportunities to form associations that extend beyond the immediate act of eating or drinking.

The distinction matters because a product people enjoy is not necessarily a brand they feel connected to.

And the brands that understand this are better able to appreciate the psychological significance of the experiences surrounding consumption.

The Flavor That Stays With Us

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about taste is how effortlessly it can connect our present lives with our past.

A familiar ice cream might bring back the excitement of a childhood summer. A particular soup could remind us of someone who cared for us. A drink enjoyed during a memorable journey may become inseparable from the destination.

These associations are not universal. They are shaped by our individual experiences, relationships, and cultural backgrounds.

For food and beverage companies, the challenge is therefore more profound than creating a flavor consumers find appealing.

It involves delivering experiences that are recognizable, dependable, and worth returning to.

Professor Choong Whan Park's insights into sensory branding and emotional attachment help illuminate why consistency matters in this process. When consumers repeatedly encounter a brand in meaningful circumstances, its sensory qualities can become associated with much more than its immediate functional benefits.

Over time, a familiar flavor may become part of a personal story.

And that is why some foods never completely disappear from our memories.

We may forget the packaging, the price, or the advertisement that introduced us to a product. But sometimes, decades later, one familiar bite is enough to remind us of an entire chapter of our lives.