Why the same wine tasted better at $90 than at $10

In January 2008, a group of researchers published a study with a slightly dull title: "Marketing Actions Can Modulate Neural Representations of Experienced Pleasantness". The finding inside it is a lot more fun. The same Cabernet Sauvignon tasted better to people when they were told it cost $90 than when they were told it cost $10.

What the researchers did

The study came out in PNAS on 14 January 2008. It was by Hilke Plassmann, John O'Doherty, Baba Shiv and Antonio Rangel, working across Caltech and Stanford (Stanford News). Participants lay in an fMRI scanner, tasted wine and saw a price for each one.

They believed they were sampling five different Cabernet Sauvignons. There were only three (Stanford News). One wine appeared twice, once labelled $5 and once $45. Another appeared as $90 and as $10. The third was shown at its correct price of $35, mainly as a distraction (ScienceDaily).

So for two of the wines, the only thing that changed between sips was the number on the screen.

The drinkers said the wines labelled as more expensive tasted better. On its own, that could be people saying what they think they're supposed to say. The scanner is what makes this study worth talking about. When the price was higher, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain linked to pleasure, was more active (Stanford News).

Baba Shiv put it simply: price "is changing people's experiences with a product." Not their opinion after the fact. The experience itself, while it's happening.

What this means if you sell something

If you run a brand, you probably think of your price as the last step. You make the thing, work out your costs, add a margin and put a number on it. This study suggests the number does more work than that. It arrives before the product does, and it sets up what a person expects to feel.

Picture this. Two people book the same session with the same designer. One pays a price that feels serious. The other gets it for an amount that feels like a favour. It's fair to ask whether they walk in paying the same attention, and whether they walk out feeling they got the same thing.

Your price sits next to your packaging, your website, your photos and the way you write your emails. All of it tells someone what to expect before they've tried anything. When those signals point the same way, the experience has a head start. When lovely work carries a bargain price, or a premium price sits on a messy page, the signals pull against each other.

That's perceived value. It isn't fake. It's part of how people actually experience what you sell.

The honest caveats

This was a small study. The Caltech release describes the group as 11 male Caltech graduate students who liked and occasionally drank red wine (ScienceDaily). That's not a broad slice of shoppers, and one lab study about wine doesn't prove your clients will react the same way to your prices. (We also couldn't open the PNAS page itself, so the details here come from the Stanford and Caltech press releases.)

It's also about expectations, and expectations only stretch so far. A higher price made a wine taste better in a scanner. It won't rescue careless work for long. If a client pays a premium and gets something sloppy, the price only makes the disappointment sharper. The useful reading is narrower: when the work is good, a price that matches it helps people feel that it's good.

One thing to do this week

Pull up your pricing page, or the message you usually send with a quote, and read it like a stranger would. Don't ask "is this fair?" Ask "what does this number tell someone before they've seen the work?"

Then look at what sits around the number. Is the page tidy? Is the work shown well? Does the way you describe the offer sound as considered as the price you're asking? If the price says one thing and everything around it says another, start with the surroundings, because that's what people see before they decide.

Before anyone has tried your work, what is your price already telling them?

Branding is perceived value. Let’s raise yours.

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