The authors demonstrate that marketing actions, such as pricing, can alter the actual efficacy of products to which they are applied. These placebo effects stem from activation of expectancies about the efficacy of the product, a process that appears not to be conscious. In three experiments, the authors show that consumers who pay a discounted price for a product (e.g., an energy drink thought to increase mental acuity) may derive less actual benefit from consuming this product (e.g., they are able to solve fewer puzzles) than consumers who purchase and consume the exact same product but pay its regular price. The studies consistently support the role of expectancies in mediating this placebo effect

This article examines the study on placebo effects, conducted by Baba Shiv, Ziv Carmon, and Dan Ariely. The idea behind the researchers' experiment is simple. The more a person pays for a beverage advertised to increase mental acuity, the bigger the performance enhancing effect should be. However, paying more for the beverage did not improve mental performance so much as paying discounted prices impaired performance. Such a result suggests that the product marketing can establish a placebo effect in terms of its efficacy that precedes the price effect

In Shiv, Carmon, and Ariely (2005), the authors demonstrate that marketing actions such as price promotions and advertising evoke consumer expectations, which can alter the actual efficacy of the marketed product, a phenomenon they call “placebo effects of marketing actions.” In this rejoinder, they build on the preceding commentaries and refine their framework to account more fully for factors that may influence this placebo effect, and they describe directions for further research in this new topic area