I had another blog post in the works when a friend shared this great piece on their Facebook wall.
The Essence of Pleasure by Jonah Lehrer
I couldn’t help but scrap my other post (or at least put it on hold) to jump on this topic for a few moments. The Essence of Pleasure briefly promotes Jonah’s new book while sharing a few experiments from Yale and Cal-Tech pyschologists and neuroscientists. One such experiment is an “oldy but a goody” that has been recreated in a number of different environments, all with similar results. Here is one anecdote shared in his post regarding the expensive vs. cheap taste test:
Twenty people sampled five Cabernet Sauvignons that were distinguished solely by their retail price, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although the people were told that all five wines were different, the scientists weren’t telling the truth: there were only three different wines. This meant that the same wines would often reappear, but with different price labels. For example, the first wine offered during the tasting (it was a cheap bottle of Californian Cabernet) was labeled both as a $5 wine (it’s actual retail price) and as a $45 dollar wine, a 900 percent markup. All of the red wines were sipped inside an fMRI machine.
Not surprisingly, the subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better. They preferred the $90 bottle to the $10 bottle, and thought the $45
Cabernet was far superior to the $5 plonk. By conducting the wine tasting inside an fMRI machine (the drinks were sipped via a network of plastic tubes) the scientists could see how the brains of the subjects responded to the different wines. While a variety of brain regions were activated during the experiment, only one brain region seemed to respond to the price of the wine, rather than the wine itself: the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which is believe to “integrate” sensory information with our expectations. In general, more expensive wines made the medial orbitofrontal cortex more excited. The scientists argue that the activity of this brain region shifted the preferences of the wine tasters, so that the $90 Cabernet seemed to taste better than the $10 Cabernet, even though they were actually the same wine.
In reading the comments on the post, there are numerous people arguing that true wine connoisseurs would be able to tell the difference, the machine messed with taste buds, etc. Regardless, in one way or another, it has been proven over and over again that people convince themselves that the more expensive object is usually better.
As I often do, I’d like to challenge people to apply this to B2B marketing. More specifically, apply this to the brand of your AEC firm.
If we believe in the research (which I do), then let’s replace the word “price” in this experiment with the word “value.” I think it’s safe to say that price is just one way that we determine value. When we do that, we focus the conversation on how to position our AEC firm brand as the most valuable – regardless of what we charge for our services.
A whole list of questions comes to my mind when I think about firm branding in these terms:
- Does your firm LOOK expensive, even if it isn’t?
- Are you providing value-adds to your clients, or just finishing the job?
- Do you appear bigger or more established than you are?
- Has a client or potential client ever told you that?
- Have you ever won a job over a larger competitor, or one that was less expensive?
Great post, will read Lehrer's book – a favorite thinker. I think it has to do not just with the price but the quality that resonates with the particular audience. One person's gaudy is another's Dollywood.
Thanks for this thoughtful post. Value is absolutely in the eye of the beholder, or should I say taste buds….
Interestingly, a friend brought a bottle of Charles Shaw Chardonnay to a dinner party last week, without realizing that it was "Two Buck Chuck" from Trader Joe's. Was it enjoyable? Of course. Perhaps more interestingly, she told us the story of reading about the wine in a blind competition and the special trip she made to TJ's to buy it, only to learn that they were out of it. She finally did find it and then put it in her cellar, completely forgetting its "heritage" until someone teased her about bringing it. So what could have been a faux pas turned into a charming and memorable story.
Thanks for the reads and the comments! Who doesn't love a good story about two buck chuck! 🙂