The Clothes Make the Interviewer: Clothing and Our Expectations of Price
Imagine you’re at the beach during the summer, and the one thing you fancy is a nice, cold beer. A quick glance at the boardwalk gives you two options: a run-down convenience store and an upscale hotel bar. They both sell the same drink in the same bottle, but what matters is the price: the hotel charges you twice as much as the convenience store. The rational approach would be to default to the convenience store (and in some cases we do). But what about those other times when we saunter up to the bar, have it served in a tall frosty glass, and don’t bat an eye at the bill?
Dan Ariely, author of the book “Predictably Irrational,” argues that our expectations may be influenced by presentation. “There’s a reason that learning to present food artfully on the plate is as important in culinary school as learning to grill and fry,” writes Ariely.
So what’s the theory?
The theory is simple: does the clothing of the interviewer change the perception of value in a product? If a man in a suit, shirt, tie and nice shoes asked you how much something cost, would that answer change if it were asked by someone dressed in sweatpants, a loose fitting shirt and sneakers? Would you, as Ariely puts it, have increased expectations when dressed in that way?
The hypothesis, of course, is that people will quote higher prices to the man in the suit, and lower prices to the man in the sweatpants. There is some logic behind this thinking: in a 2011 lecture, Brian Main, Economics professor at the University of Edinburgh, notes a clear distinction between the value placed on a commodity versus the quality of the deal relative to the cost of the commodity. According to Main, it’s why we pay more for the same beer at a fancy hotel bar than at a run-down convenience store.
Methodology
The setup for the experiment was quite simple: I approach someone on the street with the same photograph of a generic man’s shoe, and ask them how much they think a pair of the shoes is worth. I would record their response and their gender.
For the first half of the interviews, I was neatly dressed in a gray suit , blue shirt, tie and polished black shoes. For the other half, I was carelessly dressed in a loose fitting long-sleeved shirt, baggy sweatpants and sneakers.
Shoes were chosen as the target for price quotes because of the wide variety in styles and types: they can range anywhere from $20 to $800 a pair, with some even going higher. For the the experiment, I pulled a photo of the “‘Stallworth’ cap toe boot” from luxury American department store Nordstrom (it currently retails for $450).
All outside variables were minimized: the interviews were all conducted along the same stretch of road right outside the Bobst Library at New York University. The lead-in question would be the same: “How much do you think this would cost?” Instead of asking for the price between two items, and thereby introducing variables, I would pose the same photograph to all.
The only difference would be in the appearance of the interviewer.
Rationally, the photograph of the shoes should generate the same price range. But if Ariely is correct, people’s expectations will be influenced by the dress of the interviewer, quoting a higher price when I’m dressed in a suit and a lower price when I’m dressed in careless clothes.
Two changes of clothes later and I had my results.
Results and Conclusion
Much to my surprise, the results showed no significant difference between the prices quoted when I was wearing careless dress versus when I was wearing neat dress. In fact, when I was wearing careless dress, people showed a propensity to quote higher prices at me!
The results may be skewed because they involved shoes, specifically a man’s boot. I interviewed 25 women and 20 men while dressed in careless clothes, and 26 women and 19 men while dressed in neat clothes. Because the point was to see if people would quote numbers for an item they may not be familiar with price-wise, it’s entirely possible that the cost of these shoes are well-known, creating uniform results.
The best way to repeat the experiment would be to use a relatively unknown consumer good — or even something that does not normally carry a price. The point is to tease out the irrational side in all of us. Main notes that while economists describe what we should do, it’s the psychologists that describe what we actually do.
