Does a higher price affect how much people like your product? The answer appears to be Yes, according to research conducted by Antonio Rangel and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology.

They wanted to test out people’s perceptions of higher price equating to higher quality. So they asked 20 people to sample wine while an MRI scan measured their brain’s response to the wine.

The subjects were told they would be tasting five different Cabernet Sauvignons sold at different prices, with prices marked on each sample ranging from $5 to $90.

In fact, they were really only tasting three different samples at different price points - so, for instance, a $90 wine was labelled at both $10 and $90, and a $5 wine was labelled at both $5 and $45.

The brains of the people in the test showed more pleasure at the higher price than the lower one, even for the same wine! In other words, increases in the price of the product resulted in an increase in pleasure experienced by the drinkers.

However, when the testers did not have any prices to compare, they actually rated the $5 wine as better than the others!

“Our results suggest that the brain might compute experienced pleasantness in a much more sophisticated manner that involves integrating the actual sensory properties of the substance being consumed with the expectations about how good it should be,” they reported, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In other words, the stereotype that a low price is inferior, and a higher price is superior, may be more deeply ingrained into us than we realize.

Just bear that in mind next time you’re thinking of dropping your prices. You may also be lowering your product’s “liking” factor!