Perception of Quality

A study of how price and

appearance affects taste

Topic
For my project I wanted to see if price
and appearance had an affect on how
people perceive taste.

Past Research
Researchers at Stanford and CIT
conducted an experiment where
they presented participants with
two different wines. They told
them that one cost $5 and the
other cost $45, when in fact they
were the exact same wine. All of
the participants said that they
enjoyed the more expensive one
better and rated it much higher
than the cheaper labeled wine.

My Experiment
I chose two random classes of students and presented them with two differently
categorized cupcakes, blue and pink. Pink cupcakes were said to retail for $1.75
and were overall more visually appealing. Blue cupcakes were said to retail for
$0.50 and were more simply decorated. Both however were the exact same
product. After trying both, students were asked to rate the taste of each on a scale
of 1-10.

$0.50

$1.75

Hypothesis
Null hypothesis: there is no difference
between the means of group blue
and group pink.

Alternate hypothesis: the mean taste

rating for pink is higher than the
mean taste rating for blue.

H0: pink = blue

H1: pink > blue

Variables
The dependent variable is price and general appearance, which is divided
between two groups: pink and blue. The independent variable is taste, which is
measured on a 1-10 scale.

Data
Blue

Pink

Mean/Median/Mode
Blue

Pink

The mean and median for blue was 7

while for pink it was 8. That means that
the middle number and the average
were the same within each color group.
The mode for pink was 7 while blues
mode was 8. Even though pinks mode
was 7, most of its values were 7 and
above and most of blues were 8 and
below.

Blue

Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation illustrates the
normal range from the mean that most
of the ratings will fall under. The
standard deviation of blue is 1.86 while
it is 2.35 for pink. That means that the
normal rating range for blue was
between 5 and just under 9. The
common rating range for pink was about
6 to 10.

Pink

P-value
My p-value is 0.015325, to get this
equation I used the standard p-value
equation but instead of putting in 2 for
my tail number, I put in 1 because I
wanted to see specifically if pink would
get higher taste ratings, instead of just
looking for a difference in rating overall.
Because my p-value is under 0.5, I can
reject my null hypothesis.

Importance
This research is important because it
shows just how much our perception of
good and bad based on price and
appearance can drastically change our
enjoyment of the same product.

Further Research
The next step in this experiment would
to actually measure endorphins or other
tangible indicators of happiness to see if
people are actually enjoying the
products more or just think they are.