Friday, February 24, 2017

(fake) expensive wines actually taste better?

Michaela's thoughts last class on how choice affects our perceived quality and value of the wine reminded me of a study I learned about in a psych class at college. This study, run at Stanford a few years ago, found that "if a person is told he or she is tasting two different wines — and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they are, in fact, the same wine — the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker thinks he or she is enjoying the more expensive vintage." 

How crazy. This is different than someone just rating a wine more or less satisfactory on a survey; this involves an fMRI machine scanning people's brains as they drink wine and telling us pleasure centers are lighting up more with the wine that is supposedly pricier. (Note that the tasters were not professional connoisseurs.)

Expanding on Michaela's point that wine labels can be tricky to figure read and understand, it points to another marketing strategy that goes the opposite direction of Yellow Tail: highlighting the high price point of a wine. While Yellow Tail's strategy focused on a clear, clean brand with a fruity taste and minimal selection, another strategy for a pricier wine would be highlighting price to indicate the  quality - which is some weird sense becomes a chicken and egg issue as perceived quality actually gets a boost from that increased price alone.

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