The Hindu Business Line : Taste or perception?

My friend narrated an interesting incident. At a dinner party that they hosted recently, his wife prepared a chocolate cake with rich toppings for dessert and packed it in an upscale French-pastry-shop bag. Sure enough, her sister liked the cake. Just a week before that, my friend’s wife had given her sister a similar cake and had said that it was home-made. Her sister’s reaction was different — she thought that the cake was not as good as the one from the pastry shop! Why does the like or dislike for a product depend on how well it is packaged or where it comes from?

Quality of the product

Classical economists have always contended that the utility or the satisfaction that you derive from a product depends on the quality of product. But that does not seem to be the case.

Neuroscientists who have conducted studies in this area have found that our satisfaction is based more on perception.

In one such study, a group of diners at a restaurant were served a free glass of wine with their dinner. All the diners were told that the wine was of a certain brand that was not well known. But half of them were told that the origin was California and the other half, North Dakota. Interestingly, the “California” wine was rated as being better than the “North Dakota” wine.

The experiment

There was more to the experiment. Diners who received the free glass of California wine also rated the food higher and ate more. And what’s more, they were more likely to revisit the restaurant.

To prove that the result was not a one-off case, the researchers conducted several such experiments with MBA students and got similar results. Researchers, for instance, found that diners rated the wine based on the price they paid for it — higher price typically led to higher rating.

What does that tell you about our taste? That it is in our mind, not with your taste-buds! And there are spill-over effects as well. Restaurants and marketers take note.

(The author is a Chennai-based investment strategist.)

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