The Price of Pleasure

The Price of Pleasure
A study finds that a $90 wine is not as tasty when it costs only $10. Transcript of radio broadcast:
21 February 2008


This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Usually we think about material qualities when we think about the pleasure we will get from a product. When something costs a lot, we might think about all the fine work that went into it. But can price alone influence the pleasure we experience?

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Graduate School of Business say yes.

Hilke Plassmann, John O'Doherty and Antonio Rangel at Caltech and Baba Shiv at Stanford did a study. They had twenty people taste different wines. Wine was chosen because it comes in many different qualities and prices, and because a lot of people enjoy tasting it.

The people were told they were tasting five different Cabernet Sauvignons. The wines were identified only by price: five, ten, thirty-five, forty-five and ninety dollars.

But in truth there were only three different wines, and two of them were presented twice, at a high price and a low price. For example, the wine that in fact cost ninety dollars a bottle was presented half the time as a ten dollar wine.

There were two important results from the study.

First, the individuals, on average, reported greater pleasure from drinking wine that they were told was higher in price. Brain images taken while the people tasted the wine supported this finding.

Activity, represented by blood-oxygen levels, increased in an area of the brain thought to process "experienced pleasantness." Experiments have shown that the medial orbitofrontal cortex processes the experience of enjoyment from smells, taste and music. The new findings will add to the limited knowledge of how marketing affects brain activity.

The second result has meaning for economists and marketers. The experiment appears to confirm that raising the price can increase how much a product is enjoyed. In other words, when it comes to expectations, it seems you really do get what you pay for.

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Finally, we want to update our recent story on the fight over next-generation DVD technology for high definition televisions. This week, the Toshiba company in Japan announced the end of its HD DVD business, crushed by Sony's Blu-ray format.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Bob Doughty.

----------------------------Google Translate

价格乐趣
一项研究发现，一个90元，酒不是因为好吃的时候，它的成本只有10元。全文电台广播：
2008年2月21日

这是美国之音特别英语经济学报告。

通常我们认为对材质的时候，我们想到的乐趣，我们会得到一个产品。当一些费用很多，我们不妨想想，一切优秀的工作，其后进入。但可以单独价格的影响很高兴我们的经验？

研究人员从加利福尼亚州技术学院和斯坦福大学商学院说，是的。

hilke plassmann ，约翰奥多赫蒂和安东尼兰赫尔在加州理工学院和巴巴的印度公司在斯坦福大学做研究。他们有20人的口味不同的酒。葡萄酒被选中，是因为它在许多不同的品质和价格，因为很多人欣赏品尝。

市民们被告知他们品尝5种不同的赤霞珠sauvignons 。葡萄酒被认定只有价格：五人， 10 ， 35 ， 45和90美元。

但在真理的祗有三个不同的葡萄酒，其中两人被提交两次，在一个较高的价格和较低的价格。举例来说，酒，其实成本90美元一瓶提交时间节省了一半，为10美元的葡萄酒。

有两项重要成果，从研究对象。

第一，个人，平均报更大的乐趣饮酒，他们被告知，是在更高的价格。脑图像采取的，而人们尝到葡萄酒支持这一结论。

活动中，代表的血液氧含量，增加面积部分的大脑思维过程中，以"经验pleasantness " 。实验表明，内侧眶皮质过程中的经验，享受从气味，味道和音乐。新的调查结果，将新增有限的知识营销如何影响大脑的活动。

第二个结果的意义，经济学家和市场行销。实验似乎证实说，提高价格可以增加多少产品是享受。或者换句话说，当谈到期望，但似乎你真的这样做所得到的，是你支付的。

研究尚在进行中的Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences上。

最后，我们要更新我们最近的故事就争夺下一代DVD技术的高清晰度电视机。本星期，东芝公司在日本宣布结束其HD DVD业务，粉碎，由索尼的蓝光格式。

这也是该美国之音特别英语经济学报告，写马里奥里特尔。誊本， MP3和播客我们的报告是在voaspecialenglish.com 。我鲍勃奥尔布赖特在强悍。