Remembering Taste Experiences: Constructed Preferences From Suggestion

In a recent study on taste preferences, post-consumption feedback to consumers had no influence on their preference ratings (Lee, Frederick and Ariely 2006). Contrary to this notion is the finding that people can be led to believe that they experienced a fictitious consumption experience, such as becoming sick after eating strawberry ice cream or loving asparagus (Bernstein et al, 2005a; 2005b). We demonstrate that taste preferences can be influenced by false feedback in the same experiment using the same critical item. We discuss boundary conditions and propose a fluency hypothesis to account for post-consumption feedback illusions.

Citation:

Amanda Wudarzewski, Antonia Mantonakis, and Seema Clifasefi (2009) ,"Remembering Taste Experiences: Constructed Preferences From Suggestion", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 952-953.