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- 🧪 Nespresso’s Priming Effect
🧪 Nespresso’s Priming Effect
The psychological trick that changes how you physically experience products.
Isaac Peiris
April 29, 2025
Read time: 5 mins | Read online
I’ll admit it. I’m a bit of a coffee snob.
What can I say? I’m Australian!
So I’ve always been a bit confused about Nespresso. It’s instant coffee, made by Nestle alongside their famous jars of Nescafe instant coffee. But somehow Nespresso is in an entirely different category of luxury and taste.
Turns out, that’s the point. It’s a carefully considered brand positioning strategy that impacts every single touch point or interaction.
Hope you enjoy!
— Isaac
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Nespresso’s Priming Effect
There are two bottles of wine in front of you.
One costs $10. The other costs $90.
Which do you think will taste better?
A now-famous 2017 study served participants the exact same wine but with different price tags.
The results weren't just about what people said. MRI scans showed their brains actually experienced more pleasure when drinking what they thought was expensive wine.
The exact same liquid, with the exact same chemical properties, created different sensory experiences based on one minor cue: the price tag.
This is the priming effect.
It's the psychological phenomenon where exposure to one stimulus influences how we respond to a subsequent stimulus, often without our conscious awareness. It’s the psychological principle Nespresso have used to build a global luxury brand around what is essentially instant coffee.
The Power of Perception
The priming effect proves our experiences aren't objective. They're constructed by our expectations.
Our brains use shortcuts to make sense of the world. When we're exposed to certain cues, they activate related concepts in our minds, influencing how we interpret subsequent experiences.
The wine experiment revealed that the price tag didn’t just influence conscious preferences, it changed people's actual sensory experience.
When Nespresso launched their capsule system, instant coffee was synonymous with "cheap", "convenient" and ultimately "inferior". Freeze-dried granules in glass jars represented compromise, something you settled for when proper coffee wasn't available. Nespresso's challenge wasn't just creating better instant coffee. Their masterstroke was engineering an entire experience that primed customers to perceive their product as luxury before they ever tasted it. |  Good old Nescafe. Everyone’s grandparents have a jar of this in the back of the cupboard somewhere, right? |
Engineering the Luxury Experience
It all starts with George Clooney. Choosing Clooney as brand ambassador wasn't just about celebrity endorsement, it was a deliberate priming mechanism. Clooney embodies sophisticated masculinity, classic elegance and discerning taste. The iconic "What else?" tagline works on multiple levels. It suggests obviousness (of course this is the superior choice) while also implying exclusivity. Clooney wouldn't settle for less, and neither should you. But Clooney is just the beginning of Nespresso's priming architecture. |  Now this is definitely not Nescafe… |
Walk into a Nespresso store and you'll notice something strange. It doesn't look like a coffee shop. It looks like a luxury jewellery store.
Sleek display cases. Precise lighting. Attentive staff dressed in tailored outfits. Machines displayed like works of art rather than kitchen appliances.
Nothing about this environment says "instant coffee". Everything about it says "luxury experience".
This continues with the product itself. The capsules aren't plastic like competitors, they're aluminium. They have weight. They feel substantial. The colours are rich and coded by intensity.
The machines are engineered to create specific sensory moments. The satisfying click when inserting a capsule. The whirring sound that builds anticipation. The perfect crema that forms on top of the espresso.
Even the packaging builds on the luxury narrative. Nespresso ships in substantial boxes with magnetic closures. The capsules nestle in protective trays rather than rattling loosely.
Every touchpoint has been meticulously designed to prime your expectations before the coffee ever touches your lips.
This build up doesn’t disappoint. Because of the priming effect, the coffee genuinely tastes better to Nespresso customers.
In blind taste tests, Nespresso never beats traditionally brewed espresso. But that's exactly the point, the experience has been so expertly primed that the actual taste becomes secondary to the perception of taste.
The Priming Playbook
If parts of this playbook is sounding familiar, that’s because they are. Apple has built a multi-trillion-dollar empire using most of the same psychological principles.
Think about unboxing an Apple product. The clean white box. The perfect fit of components. The way the product is revealed.
None of this improves how the iPhone functions, but it fundamentally changes how you experience it.
Both brands share key elements in their priming playbook:
|  Apple have a world-class in-store experience, who would’ve thought the same principles could apply to an instant coffee brand! |
These brands don't just sell products. They sell carefully engineered perceptions that start long before you use the actual product.
But the most powerful element they share is complete journey control. From first advertisement to disposal, every interaction reinforces the same narrative. There are no breaks in the spell. No moments where the facade slips.
This consistency is what transforms ordinary products into status symbols and objects of desire.
The Dark Side of Expectation Engineering
While the priming effect can enhance experiences, it also raises an ethical consideration. Are you using priming to highlight genuine quality, or to disguise mediocrity?
Fast fashion brands use similar techniques, creating store environments with carefully selected music, lighting and layouts to prime customers for a premium experience while selling products made in questionable conditions. Restaurants use menu psychology and price anchoring to guide diners toward high-margin items, often placing a significantly overpriced item on the menu solely to make everything else seem reasonable by comparison. |  Fast fashion is one industry that has a gap between the primed experience and the practical reality. |
Even Nespresso itself has faced scrutiny. The environmental impact of single-use aluminium pods contradicts the sophisticated brand image. The labour practices behind coffee production often clash with the pristine boutique experience too.
The most ethical approach is to use priming to enhance experiences around genuinely good products. When priming is aligned with real value, it creates sustainable relationships. Otherwise, customers are primed into a one-off purchase that’s only followed by disappointment.
Our challenge is to create experiences that enhance perception while still delivering on the fundamental promise of our products.
Priming Your Own Brand Experience
The insight from Nespresso's success is that most businesses focus on improving their product when they should be engineering the context in which the product is experienced.
Improving coffee is hard. Creating environments that make coffee taste better to consumers is surprisingly achievable.
This doesn't mean small brands need Clooney-sized budgets to leverage priming effects. It means thinking systematically about the journey customers take:
Map every customer touchpoint - Identify each moment where customers interact with your brand from first awareness through to post-purchase.
Look for sensory engagement opportunities - Determine which senses you can engage at each stage and what messages they're currently sending.
Connect all signals to your positioning - Ensure every element, from website loading speed to packaging materials, reinforces your intended brand perception.
Develop a consistent narrative - Eliminate mixed messages that disrupt priming by ensuring every interaction tells the same story about your brand.
Design the complete journey - Remember that effective priming happens consistently throughout the entire experience, not just at the moment of product use.
In the dance between perception and reality, perception leads every step of the way.
As Clooney would say, "What else?"
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