Expectations

Why do I buy things? Because I expect them to do something. That something will be a task and the tasks can be from a variety of areas from fixing something else, to filling a "void." Essentially, I buy because of what I think the product will provide/do, and not necessarily because of what I know it will do. One example of this expectation theory is in the Coke vs. Pepsi battle. Both brands have had their own taste tests in which they find that people prefer their own soda. This is possible because Pepsi does a blind taste test and Coke does a test in which the subjects know which sodas they are consuming. Coke dominates Pepsi in the known category because people expect Coke to be better. Coke is the classic beverage, the age-old traditional beverage, and when people know which one it is, they expect it to be better, and then experience it as such. So, do expectations actually influence our experience of a product? Absolutely. If I think that something is the best, and then experience it, I will probably think that the experience was actually better than it really was. I'm sure we've all had this experience.