According Baba Shiv, a professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business and co-author of the study...

“A basic assumption in economics is that a person's "experienced pleasantness" (EP) from using a product depends only on its intrinsic properties and the state of the individual. Thus, the pleasure derived from consuming a soda should depend only on the molecular composition of the drink and the level of thirst of the individual.

In opposition to this view, a sizable number of marketing actions attempt to influence EP by changing properties of commodities, such as prices, that are unrelated to their intrinsic qualities or to the consumer’s state. This type of influence is valuable for companies, because EP serves as a learning signal that is used by the brain to guide future choices. For example, when facing the choice between previously experienced restaurants, one would tend to avoid locales where previously meals were unsavory.

Contrary to the basic assumptions of economics, several studies have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect EP by manipulating extrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer’s ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality.”

But those studies are relying on the consumer’s self-reported experience. What is really happening inside the brain?