Expectations and Outcomes

In “The Effect of Expectations” from Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely illustrates how preconceived notions can influence people’s experiences. Through his examples and experiment, he demonstrates how people unconsciously use existing knowledge and insight to discriminate on the outcome. Instinctively, people try to recall their knowledge and past experiences in an effort to foresee future outcomes that fall within stereotypes. This course of action tends to augment people’s future judgments or experiences. The past knowledge and experiences shapes the consumers’ expectations and modifies the basic sensory inputs of an experience.

As a result, this unique and profound consumer behavior illustrates the importance of the overall product package such as the labels, brands, signs, and packaging that can greatly impact the core product itself. Ariely, through his examples, reminds how the values of a product such as coffee can be augmented through various promotions and packaging as offering better containers. Thus, marketers not only have to focus on the core benefits of their products, but also concentrate on the products’ brand image, reputation, packaging, and labeling to contribute even more value to the products. Additionally, Marketers must make sure the product or service can satisfy all the high expectations that are generated from advertisements and promotions. These promotions and advertisements with focus on the experiential frameworks can significantly modify the customers’ expectations. For instance, Nike, with “Just Do It” logos, tries to implement many experiential modules of Act, Feel, and Relate promotions to stimulate the target segment’s expected needs of feeling active, alive, and accomplished. Also as Ariely has pointed out, information might be beneficial to be introduced at the end of the customer’s experience to allow for acceptance or curiosity of the customer’s mind, instead of introducing information from the outset. Thus, one can analyze better information and insights based on objective research approaches as say videotaping an unknowing customer and his/her habits in a store. One can also gain better insights by observing the test subjects’ natural habits and behavior through such methods as stakeouts or walking in the subjects’ shoes. Thus, marketers must learn on a more objective but personal level of the target customer to uncover mental models and rituals and not allow any preconceived judgments or stereotypes to interfere in the study of the target segment.

Ariely’s main examples involved observatory field studies at MIT. His partners and him observed how people, when given prior knowledge, reacted negatively to vinegar infused beer, but also how people, with no knowledge or knowledge after sampling, reacted favorably to the vinegar infused beer. The people, who lacked the knowledge or found out afterwards, actually preferred this kind of beer to normal beer. Yet, the people, who were given prior knowledge, rejected this beer, as they recall past and probably unpleasant tastes of vinegar. Another example involved Ariely’s study on coffee and its packaging. Many of the test subjects preferred to drink the same brand coffee but willing to pay at a higher price, due to an upgrade on the containers and trays that served the coffee and condiments. Another unique example was how scientists were able to isolate subjects’ brain activity in response to the branding of the product such as Coca Cola. These scientists, with the use of a special MRI, illustrated how the emotional cortex of the brain also activated along with the sensory portion of the brain, when the test subjects tasted the beverage and had knowledge of the brand.

Another good example that parallels on Ariely’s views involves basketball. Athletes usually try to intimidate their opponents through use of language such as “trash talking,” facial expressions as looking angry, or gestures as pumping fists. These actions alter the opponents mentality and expectations for the game. Since the competitors, especially in professional sports, have almost virtually equal or capable abilities to score or win the game, they must impose a sense of fear or awe in their opponents. The intimidation, nervousness, or fear tends to make the opponents fault or make mistakes that can significantly impact the game’s outcome. On several occasions, I had low expectations in winning and struggled to score or even dribble the ball in a friendly basketball game, when I had to face someone who constantly taunted me with drops of random curse words. Sometimes, I would be intimidated by my opponent’s ability to dunk the ball or fast footwork that I virtually gave up in defending the opponent. On a professional scale, the Cleveland Cavaliers, with their amazing winning record during the regular season in 2008-2009, intimidated most of their opponents during the NBA Playoffs. With Lebron James’ publicity as one of the greatest basketball players and public images of the strong team chemistry, the Cleveland Cavaliers were able to play on the Atlanta Hawks’ psychology and win an amazing 4 games in a row. After the playoffs, an announcer on TV stated how the Atlanta Hawks were not playing at their full potential and were already expecting the Cavaliers to progress into the NBA Finals. Yet to everyone's suprise, the Cavaliers lost to Orlanda in the semi-finals. The Atlanta Hawks, with strong players such as Josh Smith and Mike Bibby, had ample time to study and adapt to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ strategies before the playoffs, but simply failed in execution during the game. This example, in a sense, illustrates how the power of pre-existing knowledge in the form of intimidation can impact the future outcome as in a serious basketball tournament.

Thus, knowledge and from sources as advertisements, labels, branding, and overall packaging can augment the quality and value of the product, service, or experience from basketball games to picking which brand of beverage to drink.