Harbingers of Failure
Name
Harbingers-Duncan-Simester.pdf
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250.29 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
297aa7e468ee14c5a85b58cbb51f251a
Author(s)
Anderson, Eric
Lin, Song
Simester, Duncan
Tucker, Catherine Elizabeth
Date Issued
October 2015
Journal
Journal of Marketing Research
Citation
Anderson, Eric,et al. “Harbingers of Failure.” Journal of Marketing Research 52, 5 (October 2015): 580–592. American Marketing Association
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The authors identify customers, termed “Harbingers of failure,” who systematically purchase new products that flop. Their early adoption of a new product is a strong signal that a product will fail—the more they buy, the less likely the product will succeed. Firms can identify these customers through past purchases of either new products that failed or existing products that few other customers purchase. The authors discuss how these insights can be readily incorporated into the new product development process. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that positive customer feedback is always a signal of future success.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.13.0415
