Product development pitch: “The Toastmeister will revolutionize the way people make toast!”
Marketing: “Oh yeah? Let’s try it out in ZIP code… 65203!”
[Product engineers turn white]
[6 weeks later] “You’re fired!”
6 Likes
The researchers don’t claim a causal relationship between these different factors – donating to losing political candidates doesn’t make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, for example
Donating to losing political candidates doesn’t necessarily make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, you mean. But I very much doubt that they’ve rigorously ruled it out.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a 3-for-2 sale on Clearly Canadian over at the Dollar General, and I’ve only got half an hour before the Mike Gravel rally starts.
12 Likes
I thought so, too, but then again, maybe I don’t want to know.
9 Likes
yeah, jesus christ. I got half-way through and had to stop because I was starting to get a headache trying to adjust for his apparent inability to proofread
2 Likes
This. Poor old people stay poor and old. Plain and simple. Calling poor coupon clippers “harbingers of failure” and reversing cause/consequense is not science but sensationalism.
5 Likes
I buy a lot of failed tech, but not until it’s at the local discount store, so not really a harbinger.
Sometimes it can be re-purposed. (Looking at you $10 Oregon Scientific temp/humidity/pressure sensor that won’t pair in Bluetooth. That soldering iron can be hot in less than a minute.)
12 Likes
harbinger households voluntarily cluster
Hmm… there have been a lot of Michael Bloomberg signs going up in the neighborhood lately 
2 Likes
I’m thinking SNL has a hell of a skit waiting in here.
This. I think a perhaps even better angle on this is that these are people who are systematically over-counted or over-valued in market research.
5 Likes
I think it’s very important to notice that they are mystified what it is that causes these to exist, what the linkages are, etc. It’s a tacit admission that they just sifted through an absolute TON of data and found something. No scientific method was applied, no hypothesis was tested, etc. This the most prestigious journal in the marketing field.
11 Likes
Great analysis. Thank you!
Joe the Harbinger.
5 Likes
These are people who are always looking for “the deal”. They’ll gladly spend $10 to save $5 because it feels like a victory. They’re perpetually being suckered by one thing or another.
7 Likes
Uuuuuugh I hate data-mining anomaly-hunting fake science like this so much. If you have enough data, you can find all sorts of seemingly meaningful patterns in it. It doesn’t mean anything at all.
If you don’t go into the process with a specific hypothesis to test, and predetermined criteria for success or failure of that hypothesis, then anything you find in that data is random noise and nothing more.
How did they define “failed products”? Why is “zip code” meaningful as a geographic grouping mechanism? Did they correct for cultural, language, and socioeconomic factors? What’s the source of their data and what biases exist in how it was collected? Just a few questions off the top of my head.
“Studies” like this are bullshit. table flip
22 Likes
I was going to attribute it to optimism. But, yeah, same difference. They optimistically spend an hour of their time clipping coupons to save $5 (time is money, $5/hour is not winning. They optimistically overpay for their house and optimistically settle for too little when they sell it but think they got the best of the deal both times. They optimistically try new products and are always surprised when they fail. And they optimistically support candidates who run campaigns that overestimate their likelihood of success.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
4 Likes
Over 40 years, my wife and I have purchased many soon to be dead or deacquired car models and brands:
- PONTIAC
- SATURN(4 models)
- Chevy Volt(2)
- Ford Cmax(2)
- MAZDA, VOLVO (Ford sold off share)
- SAAB, SUBURU (GM sold off)
Perhaps we should have Elon pay us to not buy a Tesla…
8 Likes
My hometown newspaper used to have a movie and theatre reviewer like this, at least with reference to my own tastes - if he liked a movie or play, I knew I’d be better off avoiding it, and if he disliked it I knew it was a good one for me to see.
I don’t think his or my preferences correlated very strongly either way with commercial success. But they had a perfect negative correlation with one another.
This made him just as useful to me as a reviewer I always agreed with, and much more amusing to read.
13 Likes
My old copy of Webster’s dictionary says:
Harbinger
Harbinger \Har"bin*ger, n. [OE. herbergeour, OF. herbergeor one
who provides lodging, fr. herbergier to provide lodging, F.
h['e]berger, OF. herberge lodging, inn, F. auberge; of German
origin. See {Harbor}.]
- One who provides lodgings; especially, the officer of the
English royal household who formerly preceded the court
when traveling, to provide and prepare lodgings. --Fuller. - A forerunner; a precursor; a messenger.
I knew by these harbingers who were coming.
–Landor.
Harbinger \Har"bin*ger, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Harbingered}; p.
pr. & vb. n. {Harbingering}.]
To usher in; to be a harbinger of. ``Thus did the star of
religious freedom harbinger the day.‘’ --Bancroft.
1 Like
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
4 Likes
Because people (in the USA, anyway) are reasonably familiar and comfortable with ZIP codes, especially in their own areas; they are (usually) smaller than counties, so they provide better granularity; and many, many surveys, administrative data (medical, vital stats, gov’t, etc), financial and other instruments/processes record ZIP codes routinely.
You might as well ask why counties are meaningful. All lines on a map are ultimately arbitrary.
8 Likes
