Memories sit behind every behavioural decision you make. Yet they are often an overlooked component of a product lifecycle. We become so embroiled in the here-and-now of a product that it becomes easy to not consider the future representations of that product.
It’s perhaps indicative of modern life, whereby decisions are commonly made for the purpose of immediate gratification. This is the polar opposite to making decisions based on how will it benefit your future self. But that’s a whole other rabbit hole for a whole other time!
However, in this article we shall be taking a different direction to simply demonstrating that behaviour is shaped by memory. Because while we like to feel that memories are reliable, on an instinctive level we certainly know they are not. It’s remarkable how the catch caught on that fishing trip gets a little larger each time the story is retold!
In fact, the research suggests that recollection is not a fixed recording. Rather, it is reshaped each time it is recalled, and flavour, which unfolds over time, may be especially open to that reshaping. Hence, it’s not just what we experience in the moment that matters, it’s how the memory of it becomes modified over time. This is an especially poignant point for brands and brand experiences because it’s the future version of that memory that will drive repeat behaviour and advocacy.
Flavour is a sequence, not a snapshot
Anyone who has tasted a good coffee, wine, or a dram knows flavour is not one thing. It arrives in stages: an opening hit, a middle, a finish that evolves. Sensory scientists have built tools to capture this. In Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS), tasters record which sensation dominates at each moment, and the method shows the order of sensations better than older time-intensity approaches (Pineau et al., 2009).
Temporal Check-All-That-Apply (TCATA) lets tasters tick and untick every term that applies as the sample changes. In its first studies on yogurt and orange juice, the initial impression stood out as important to the dynamic profile (Castura et al., 2016).
However, at The Sensory Advantage it’s become evident that we need to push the brackets of experience out as far as we can. By that I mean considering what shapes predictive mechanisms and expectations. Of course, memory is a major voice in the predictive realm. But, as we are discussing today, we also need to stay with the product experience as it travels into memory, and further into the recollection of memory. Here’s why that last point is critical.
Memory is Selective
People do not replay the full timeline of experience; it would be overwhelming. Rather, we remember a compressed version of it.
The classic way to approach this is by understanding the Peak-End Rule. This is a psychological principle suggesting that people judge an experience largely by how they felt at its most emotionally intense moment (the peak) and how they felt at the end, rather than by the overall experience or its duration. In other words, our memory does not calculate the average quality of an experience; it gives disproportionate weight to particular moments.
The Peak-End Rule applies to flavour because we do not necessarily remember a food or drink experience as the sum of everything we tasted. For example, when tasting whisky, a sudden burst of fruitiness, an unexpected smoky note, a particularly pleasant mouthfeel, or a pronounced finish might become the defining moment of the experience.
The final impression is especially important because a pleasant aftertaste may reinforce an otherwise positive experience, while an unpleasant lingering sensation may negatively influence it. However, the direction we are heading in next shall examine how the memories of such impressions can be reshaped.
How Memories Are Reshaped
The key takeaway here is that memories are not a perfect recording of the past, rather, they are reconstructed. Hence, we can develop distorted memories or even believe in events that never happened.
A study from the University of California (Bernstein et al, 2011) asked participants to complete questionnaires about childhood food and drink experiences, food preferences, and restaurant choices. This gave the researchers a baseline of what each person believed and preferred before any suggestion was made.
A week later the researchers told them that a computer had analysed their earlier answers and produced a personalised profile of their childhood food experiences. For most participants, the profile included ordinary, plausible statements such as “You disliked spinach as a child.” But the experimental group also received one extra, targeted statement, such as: “You became ill after eating strawberry ice cream as a child,” or “You loved asparagus the first time you tried it.” This statement was not based on their real answers; it was deliberately false.
They were then asked to imagine the false event in detail and answer questions about where it happened, who was present, and how it felt. If they did not remember it, they were told to imagine what might have happened. This imagination exercise made the suggested event feel more familiar and personally plausible. The researchers compared participants’ confidence, preferences, willingness to order foods, and sometimes their actual consumption before and after the suggestion.
So what happened?
Participants led to believe they had become ill after eating hard-boiled eggs, dill pickles, strawberry ice cream, egg salad, or peach yogurt reported lower preference and, in some studies, ate less of the target food, suggesting that negative false memories can decrease preference.
However, positive false memories can increase preference. Participants told they had loved asparagus on first trying it later rated asparagus more favourably, were willing to pay more for it, and found photographs of it more appetising.
But the effects were not universal. The procedure worked less well for very familiar foods such as chocolate-chip cookies and potato chips, and only a minority of participants, usually fewer than half, became ‘believers.’ The authors also note that most participants developed a false belief that the event occurred, rather than a detailed false memory of it. However, beliefs and memories produced similar changes in food attitudes and behaviour, so the paper often treated them together.
Memory Recall is Not Like Reading a Book
Reconsolidation research says retrieval is not a read-only act. Alberini and LeDoux (2013) describe a shift from the classical view, where a stored memory is retrieved unchanged, to one where memories become vulnerable when retrieved and are then stabilised again. The next retrieval then calls up the version stored last time, not the original. They also note that when the retrieval event closely resembles the original experience, the original is more likely to be updated, whereas low similarity favours new learning.
The boundaries matter. In mice, a brief re-exposure of about three minutes made a fear memory vulnerable, while prolonged re-exposure produced a new competing memory. Older and stronger memories needed longer re-exposure before they became vulnerable to alteration (Suzuki et al., 2004). That is rodent pharmacology, not shoppers, but the principle that duration and strength of reactivation matter is worth keeping.
The most relevant recent study uses human neuroimaging (Qi and Coutanche, 2026).
Participants learned made-up names paired with pictures. For example, a made-up Dutch word paired with a picture of a chair. Later, they were reminded of each item in one of three ways:
Item level: “Does this have a seat?” – focusing on a specific detail of that object.
Category level: “Is this furniture?” – focusing on the general type of object.
Theme level: “Is this related to cooking?” – focusing on a broader situation or context.
Then, while their brains were scanned with fMRI, participants did a recognition task. They were shown a made-up word and had to choose the correct matching picture.
What the researchers found was that the participants performed about equally well in all three conditions. So the different ways of thinking about the memory did not make some people better at remembering than others. But their brain activity was different. The researchers could tell, from patterns of brain activity, which type of question a person had answered earlier, even though the memory test itself looked the same behaviourally.
The study suggests that memories are not fixed files that stay exactly the same after being stored. Each time you retrieve or revisit a memory, you may update it slightly depending on what aspect of it you focus on.
But here’s an additional layer.
Rugg and Renoult (2025) argue it is unclear whether memory updating exists in the strict sense. The original trace may remain and simply be out-competed by a newer one, and apparent updating can be explained by source confusion. They also describe ‘retrieval gating’ where people seem to retrieve mainly the features relevant to their current goal. And they warn that changes in fMRI patterns may reflect changes in how strongly different traces are active, not changes to the traces themselves.
Remembered Enjoyment Steers Behaviour
Does any of this reach behaviour? Robinson, Blissett and Higgs (2012) offer the most direct evidence. They asked participants to rehearse what they found enjoyable about a food right after eating it. That raised remembered enjoyment, and it led people to choose and eat more of the food at a buffet lunch the next day. Robinson's thesis work (2011) adds that the final moments of a food item, and the most enjoyable item in a multi-item meal (remember Peak-End Rule?), predicted remembered enjoyment, although dietary restraint moderated this.
Consumer researchers make the general point too that the decision to repeat an experience rests more on the memory of it than on the experience itself (Krey and Flacandji, 2020). Put these together and you get a plausible route from a flavour sequence, through what gets recalled, to what gets purchased again.
What Brands Can Test
Treat these as hypotheses to test, not findings.
Design the peak and the finish. If memory keeps highlights, the standout moment and the last note carry weight in repurchase. TDS or TCATA can show where they fall in your product's sequence.
Choose the retrieval cue. Marketing copy, imagery, and follow-up messages prompt people to recall particular parts of the experience. An item-specific cue (i.e. that smoky finish) and a category cue (i.e. a fruity summer drink) might leave different traces, if the brain findings carry over to flavour.
Mind the window after consumption. The period after consumption is when memory is most open to influence. Post-purchase communication is not neutral.
Protect consistency. Because recall is reconstructed, a flavour that stays recognisable gives memory a stable base. Younger and weaker memories seem easier to shift than older, stronger ones.
Reinforce, don't invent. Advertising can infiltrate experiential memory. Use that to strengthen what the product genuinely delivers, not to create an experience it does not.
Want To Go Deeper?
It’s clear that memory is critical to product experience. It shapes prediction and expectation, it’s central to aroma and flavour identification, and it informs future behaviour. After all, consumption occurs in a fleeting moment and the experience of it rapidly becomes a memory rather than ongoing sensation.
However, once we consider how memories are reshaped, we can begin to appreciate the importance of what follows consumption. Every brand touch point and message can enhance either likeability or aversion.
This is when the importance of the full product experience timeline becomes apparent. It’s why we pay particular attention to this within our workshops for industry teams. Whether is understanding the product itself, or designing more memorable visitor experiences, understanding the current scientific insights on how memories are formed and recalled is key.
References
Alberini, C. M., & LeDoux, J. E. (2013). Memory reconsolidation. Current Biology.
Bernstein, D. M., Pernat, N. L. M., & Loftus, E. F. (2011). The false memory diet: False memories alter food preferences. In V. R. Preedy, R. R. Watson, & C. R. Martin (Eds.), Handbook of behavior, food and nutrition (pp. 1645–1663). Springer.
Castura, J. C., Antúnez, L., Giménez, A., & Ares, G. (2016). Temporal check-all-that-apply (TCATA): A novel temporal sensory method for characterizing products. Food Quality and Preference.
Krey, N., & Flacandji, M. (2020). Remembering shopping experiences: The Shopping Experience Memory Scale. Journal of Business Research.
Pineau, N., Schlich, P., Cordelle, S., Mathonnière, C., Issanchou, S., Imbert, A., Rogeaux, M., & Etiévant, P. (2009). Temporal dominance of sensations: Construction of the TDS curves and comparison with time-intensity. Food Quality and Preference.
Qi, X., & Coutanche, M. N. (2026). Memory traces reflect how they were last accessed. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Robinson, E. (2011). Episodic memory and food choice [Doctoral thesis]. University of Birmingham.
Robinson, E., Blissett, J., & Higgs, S. (2012). Changing memory of food enjoyment to increase food liking, choice and intake. British Journal of Nutrition.
Rugg, M. D., & Renoult, L. (2025). The cognitive neuroscience of memory representations. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
Suzuki, A., Josselyn, S. A., Frankland, P. W., Masushige, S., Silva, A. J., & Kida, S. (2004). Memory reconsolidation and extinction have distinct temporal and biochemical signatures. Journal of Neuroscience.