Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions: Consumers May Get What They Pay For

We show that offering products such as energy drinks at a discount can change the efficacy of those products (—a placebo effect) because it leads consumers to incorrectly believe that those products are less effective. A set of experiments show that consumers paying a discounted price for a product (e.g., an energy drink thought to increase mental acuity) may extract less benefit from the product compared to consumers who purchase the same product at full price.



Citation:

Wendy Liu, Itamar Simonson, and On Amir (2005) ,"Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions: Consumers May Get What They Pay For", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Karin M. Ekstrom and Helene Brembeck, Goteborg, Sweden : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 308-309.

Authors

Wendy Liu, Stanford University
Itamar Simonson, Stanford University
On Amir, Yale University



Volume

E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7 | 2005



Share Proceeding

Featured papers

See More

Featured

Restrained by Resources: The Joint Effect of Scarcity Cues and Childhood Socioeconomic Status (SES) on Consumer Preference for Feasibility

Lili Wang, Zhejiang University
Yanfen You, New Mexico State University, USA
Chun-Ming Yang, Ming Chuan University, Taiwan

Read More

Featured

Rejecting Moralized Products: Moral Identity as a Predictor of Reactance to “Vegetarian” and “Sustainable” Labels

Rishad Habib, University of British Columbia, Canada
Yann Cornil, University of British Columbia, Canada
Karl Aquino, University of British Columbia, Canada

Read More

Featured

Understanding Trust Formation in Peer-to-peer Social Commerce

Lena Cavusoglu, Portland State University
Deniz Atik, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA

Read More

Engage with Us

Becoming an Association for Consumer Research member is simple. Membership in ACR is relatively inexpensive, but brings significant benefits to its members.