Nurofen were once taken to court for claiming their painkillers included specific ingredients for back pain, when they in actual fact were identical to other pain killers. The use of this placebo effect meant that consumers had a perceived higher quality of the brand, therefore influencing their experience.

Consumers are heavily influenced by their supposed experience of a brand, with this directly influencing how they view the quality, how much they will spend, and whether they will buy the product again. This is known as expectation assimilation.

In this episode of our behavioural science podcast, author of the Choice Factory Richard Shotton and Will Hanmer-Lloyd discuss the significance of expectation assimilation and how this can feed into a brands long term strategy to deliver results, using examples from brands including Coca Cola who have capitalized on this.

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