The Placebo Effect in Marketing: Sometimes you Just Have to Want it to Work

SCA) document for the first time that nonconscious expectations about the relationship between price and quality can influence consumers in a placebo-like manner. Even when the price paid for a good has absolutely no relationship to its actual quality, consumers ’ nonconscious beliefs about the price–quality relationship change their actual experience with the good. As Berns (2005) notes, performance is enhanced beyond the baseline by drawing attention to the marketing claims surrounding the product. Broadly speaking, a placebo has been defined in the medical literature as “a substance or procedure that has no inherent power to produce an effect that is sought or expected ” (Stewart-Williams and Podd 2004). In more colloquial terms, a placebo is essentially a “sugar pill. ” Such placebo effects have been observed in numerous medical