Rohail Rizvi

A recent all-you-can-eat lobsterfest at Rutgers made me realize how much perceived value plays a role in whether customers will buy your product or not. This was only my second time trying lobster and to be quite honest, I didn’t find anything spectacular about it. It was nothing amazing, but my the looks of it you’d think that there were diamonds hidden in those lobsters considering the wild rampage of people trying to stuff as much lobster down as they possibly could. What could possess my peers to go all out on something that seemed so average to me. It occurred to me that it wasn’t really the lobster they were attracted to, but rather the perceived value of the lobster. Knowing that lobster can fetch $20-$30 at a nice restaurant, the value of the lobster was automatically higher than what it’s value (taste-wise) might really be. Either that, or maybe I’m just not a lobster person.