If It Costs More It Must Taste Better?
Posted on April 7, 2008 | Permalink
By Lane Casteix
At least that is what your brain says. Antonio Rangel and researchers at the California Institute of Technology set out to understand the impact of shelf price on taste perceptions, specifically for wine. Does wine that costs more taste better than the cheaper stuff?
The study is sure to be challenged because the sample size was small at only 11 male Caltech graduate students who said they liked and occasionally drank red wine. The subjects were told that they would be trying five different Cabernet Sauvignons, identified by price, to study the effect of sampling time on flavor. In fact, only three wines were used—two were given twice. The first wine was identified by its real bottle price of $5 and by a fake $45 price tag. The second wine was marked with its actual $90 price and by a fictitious $10 tag. The third wine, which was used to distract the participants, was marked with its correct $35 price. A tasteless water was also given in between wine samples to rinse the subjects' mouths. The wines were given in random order, and the students were asked to focus on flavor and how much they enjoyed each sample.
The participants were subjected to MRI scans to gauge brain activity as they swallowed wine through a pump attached to their mouths, a tricky complication because the scanner requires people to lie very still as it measures blood flow in the brain. It was proposed that a person's anticipated experience would prompt higher activity in the part of the brain that experiences pleasure.
Guess what? Yeah, you probably guessed it. The participants said they could taste five different wines, even though there were only three, and added that the wines identified as more expensive tasted better. The researchers found that an increase in the perceived price of a wine did lead to increased activity because of an associated increase in taste expectation.
So, can everyone now jack up their prices with the expectation their customers will happily find that the product tastes, looks, feels, drives, runs, washes, drys, etc., better? Not exactly, but this does tell us what many in marketing already knew, that purchases are made more on emotion and perceived value rather than price. Oh, there are still plenty of price shoppers out there to go around, but when settling on a price for your product, especially if it is wine, you may want to think more about raising the price.