An MIT study finds the same consumers tend to purchase failed products. Dubbed “harbingers of failure,” these buyers may provide new window
Diet Crystal Pepsi. Frito Lay Lemonade. Watermelon-flavored Oreos. Through the years, the shelves of stores have been filled with products that turned out to be flops, failures, duds, and losers. But only briefly filled with them, of course, because products like these tend to get yanked from stores quickly, leaving most consumers to wonder: Who exactly buys these things, anyway? Now a published study co-authored by two MIT professors answers that question. Amazingly, the same group of consumers has an outsized tendency to purchase all kinds of failed products, time after time, flop after flop, Diet Crystal Pepsi after Diet Crystal Pepsi. The study calls the people in this group “harbingers of failure” and suggests they provide a new window into consumer behavior. “These harbingers of failure have the unusual property that they keep on buying products that are taken from the shelves,” says MIT marketing professor Catherine Tucker, co-author of a paper detailing the study’s results. Significantly, Tucker adds, these star-crossed consumers can sniff out flop-worthy products of all kinds. “This is a cross-category effect,” Tucker explains. “If you’re the kind of person who bought something that really didn’t resonate with the market, say, coffee-flavored Coca-Cola, then that also means you’re more likely to buy a type of toothpaste or laundry detergent that fails to resonate with the market.”
Let me just say, this is a hell of a way to find out they quit making that coffee-flavored coke you liked.
