Product Information, Hedonic Evaluation, and Purchase Decision: an Experimental Study of Orange Juice

Two randomly sampled groups of subjects were endowed with real budgets and placed in 5 different budget/price situations. In each situation they had to evaluate 6 orange juices and complete a demand table. At the end of the experiment, one demand table was randomly selected and participants had to buy the corresponding products. In one group, participants choose after looking at the packaging in the other they could also taste the products. Results show that participants who chose without tasting, made quicker decisions, selected a larger number of variants and were more influenced by prices than those who could taste the products. Although choices appeared very heterogeneous, most participants exhibit coherent behaviors. (JEL classification: C91, D12)