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Researchers Study "Harbingers of Failure," Consumers Who Habitually Pick Losers

AmiMoJo writes: Is your favorite TV show always getting cancelled? Did you love Crystal Pepsi? Were you an early adopter of the Zune? If you answered yes to these questions, researchers say you might be a "Harbinger of Failure." In a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research, researchers identified a group of consumers whose preferences can predict products that will fail. “Certain customers systematically purchase new products that prove unsuccessful,” wrote the study authors. “Their early adoption of a new product is a strong signal that a product will fail.”

6 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Link to original paper by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Informative

    Screwed up the link to the PDF -- better link to abstract here, where you can get PDF.

  2. Re:Links to the actual study? by parallel_prankster · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here, the above link and the chicago tribune links are horrible. Sorry about the link format! https://www.google.com/url?sa=...

  3. Re:Links to the actual study? by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a link to the study in case anyone is interested. I don't have the time to go through it in detail right now myself, but perhaps someone else could pick over it.

    You'd think that Slashdot editors would try to include that kind of link in the summary as if there's anything worth reading it's the source itself.

  4. Re:Zune by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    My zune still works as well. I use it every day.
    Good battery life, large amount of storage.
    Only downside is that you have to use the stupid zune software.
    I'm sure the apple fanbois will be shocked that I don't buy a new mp3 player every year when this one still works fine.

    Better call Intel, samsung and nvidia. Looks like their products are all about to fail.

  5. It's OLD NEWS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The date of the publication of the original article ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2420600 ) was April 4, 2014

    Date of today - July 6. 2015

    Has Slashdot become a museum of obsolete news?

  6. Re:67% is 75th percentile by gnasher719 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The study, available in MS-Word format in a link posted by a kindly slashdotter, contains this gem. 67% is 75th percentile? People who trust the findings of such articles are the harbingers of onslaught of stupidity.

    Careful complaining about stupidity.

    Less than 25% bought more than 67% flops, and 75% didn't. That makes people picking 67% flops or more the 75% percentile.