- Pony Ameri
- Hannah Gross
- Suna S. Legolu
- Autumn Rains
Do positive marketing messages influence a consumer’s preference of a product? Many experiments have been conducted on how expectations influence perception. These experiments have shown that people’s level of enjoyment is impacted by the cues that they are given before consumption. To examine this theory, we conducted The Olive Oil Taste Test, a two-factor deception design field experiment. Participants were asked to taste two samples of the same olive oil in a randomized order under the guise the oils were different. Participants in treatment were given a marketing message regarding one of the olive oil samples, indicating it was superior in quality. Participants in control were given an alternative factual message. We performed analysis using linear regression in R Studio. The results of our experiment show that participants do not tend to favor an olive oil with a marketing message. This outcome leads us to conclude that marketing messages do not have an effect on a consumer’s enjoyment of a product. However, there are reasons to remain skeptical about these results. The most important reason being a low powered experiment, given the small sample size and lukewarm marketing message. Despite our results, we believe that it may be worthwhile to reproduce this experiment with a large sample and a potent marketing message to produce more robust results.
UC BERKELEY MIDS: W241 - Experiments and Causal Inference
