How price-effects accrue with product experience and expertise

Abstract

Attempting to understand how blind and sight-based judgements are variously mediated by degrees of experience and expertise, this study asks two questions. First: with increasing product familiarity, when do our associative processes begin to twin price with quality so that ultimately the price-cue is employed as a proxy for genuine quality? Second: how might the strength of this price-cue association vary across bands of relative expertise? To address these questions, we report on a blind-versus-sighted cheddar cheese tasting-room experiment to model reported utility in the presence of price information. Eight cheeses are tasted by 127 subjects and regression models estimate significant price-effects across bands of both (1) self-confessed expertise (novice, intermediate, expert) and (2) consumption experience (measured over years). In both instances of increasing expertise and experience, sight-based assessments become more correlated with price. This confirms a process of cue-conditioning. Thus, while cheaper cheddars are preferred by novices, when in the presence of price information, more experienced subjects express increasing preference for more expensive cheddars. With increasing years of experience (though not expertise) price information receptivity also appears to be built into how we taste blind; suggesting some alternate process of acquired price learning.