In response to an external source’s (Seth’s) blog “BIG PROMISES CAN LEAD TO BETTER EXPERIENCES”-http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/11/big-promises-lead-to-better-experiences.html– I would like to elaborate on his theory that big promises lead to higher satisfaction.
Seth begins by stating that a $75 bottle of wine tastes better than a $14 dollar one, even if you switch the wine they hold. He explains that this is due to “the promise implied in the price,” which actually “changes the way we experience the product”.
I completely agree with this, and believe it to be true because of the fact that humans are psychological beings. We often rationalize things in our favour; so if we pay $75 for a bottle of wine, in order to justify our behaviour of spending so much on a bottle, we say “if it’s $75, it MUST be good wine!” and therefore it’s worth it.
I believe human beings often rely on others to think for them, and instead of analyzing quality and doing research on products ourselves, we depend on signals to do the work for us. In this case a “signal” could be the price, and the signal provides us with the comfort that the product is of good quality. If the price is high, we automatically believe that it must be something worth paying that much for. For instance, usually people don’t want to be cheap with the meat they buy because it could make them sick, and so we rely on the signal of price to determine if the meat is of high quality.
Seth expresses that we should keep in mind that people tend to have better experiences when they expect to have a better experience, and goes on to say “to hold back on your promise is to deprive your customer of something valuable”.
I both agree and disagree to what he is saying. I do think when we expect to have better experiences they turn out more satisfying; for example, if a salesperson at the Apple store raves about how wonderful and well-suited the macbook air is for students, I would have high expectations of the machine. In turn, I would get that expected utility as I would refer back to the salesperson’s confidence, which was, in itself, an indirect promise of it’s high quality.
However this could also turn out to be detrimental, in that if the promise is UNREALISTIC, I, as a customer, would end up feeling disappointed. As we learnt in class, if unrealstic expectations/promises are built (e.g. this product will make you lose 100 lbs a day), I would not go back to the seller.
Sources:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com
http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/most-expensive-wine-1.jpg