Dive Brief:
- When choosing between identical foods with different prices, consumers think the more expensive version tastes better, according to researchers from Cornell University.
- The researchers examined the dining habits of 139 visitors to a buffet-style restaurant in upstate New York. Sometimes the buffet cost $4 a person. Sometimes it cost $8.
- Paying twice as much for the same food yielded an 11% increase in how much consumers enjoyed their meal.
Dive Insight:
No doubt a lot of people will spend a lot of time trying to poke holes in this research.
But it seems that the researchers have proven something that most everyone in the food business knows intuitively. Consumers associate cost with quality, applying a bias to some foods based on their price tag.
When people feel as if they've splurged a bit on a meal, it turns out that most actually enjoy the food more. (Although our guess is that for some folks with economic problems, splurging a bit leads to the opposite reaction.)
Understanding such things is the key to food marketing. And understanding food marketing is a Cornell specialty.
