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Gingko posted an update 11 years, 9 months ago
@jackie update with an interesting article about placebo effect. it’s really a lot more than the placebo effect people usually talk about… and if you have heard enough about expensive teas, probably you can relate it to tea! 😉 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/99532.php
A Digital Ocean of Tea
Reply
Thanks @gingkoseto – I think @xavier and @bram would find this interesting too. Are you saying that (artificially) expensive tea makes the consumer believe the tea has got to be worth more and taste better?
People seem to have the intuition (me include, though I’m often, but not always able to correct it) that price is based on honest markers. So better quality, more rare, harder to get/produce etc. If the market was honest this would usually be a justified reasoning. Unfortunately this is not always the case. I would expect that the placebo effect is stronger due to this intuition.
i guess most price inflation in this country is not due to dishonest, but due to charging high service fee, or making package more expensive than fee, or having high operational cost due to advertisement costs. a $20 tea could easily be honestly worth $100 if the shop were opened at the 5th ave. in NYC, and the owner would go bankruptcy if they still sell the tea for $20. but the same tea, probably would be claimed better by a lot of people, when it’s sold for $100. i like what @teaism once said, don’t get cheated twice….first by tea vendors then by yourself by saying it is good when it is not 😉