Pricing Points & Perceived Value

This interesting item in from Yahoo news ...

In a recent research study, people where given two samples of wine and told that one was expensive and one was not. The participants were then asked to rate the wines. People consistently rated the more expensive wine better. The problem is ... both samples were from the same bottle of wine.

Not only did the people self-report, they were also physiologically measured on an MRI. According to the article by Randolph E. Schmid,

The testers' brains showed more pleasure at the higher price than the lower one, even for the same wine, Rangel reports in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In other words, changes in the price of the wine changed the actual pleasure experienced by the drinkers, the researchers reported.

When people pay more for things, they perceive it as higher value. Perhaps we should call this the "Starbucks effect."