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Published online on January 14, 2008, 10.1073/pnas.0706929105

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NEUROSCIENCE
Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness

Hilke Plassmann*, John O'Doherty*, Baba Shiv{dagger}, and Antonio Rangel*,{ddagger}

*Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, MC 228-77, Pasadena, CA 91125; and {dagger}Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 518 Memorial Way, Littlefield L383, Stanford, CA94305

Edited by Leslie G. Ungerleider, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, and approved December 3, 2007 (received for review July 24, 2007)

Abstract

Despite the importance and pervasiveness of marketing, almost nothing is known about the neural mechanisms through which it affects decisions made by individuals. We propose that marketing actions, such as changes in the price of a product, can affect neural representations of experienced pleasantness. We tested this hypothesis by scanning human subjects using functional MRI while they tasted wines that, contrary to reality, they believed to be different and sold at different prices. Our results show that increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of flavor pleasantness as well as blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness during experiential tasks. The paper provides evidence for the ability of marketing actions to modulate neural correlates of experienced pleasantness and for the mechanisms through which the effect operates.

orbitofrontal cortex | modulation by marketing actions | neuroeconomics | taste

Footnotes

Author contributions: H.P., J.O., B.S., and A.R. designed research; H.P. performed research; H.P. analyzed data; and H.P., J.O., B.S., and A.R. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

{ddagger}To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rangel{at}hss.caltech.edu


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