Interesting Results
Predicting Product Preferences
Research has consistently shown that people are relatively poor at predicting others’ preferences — even (and possibly especially) when the person whose preferences they’re trying to predict is someone they know well. A series of experiments described in a recently published article suggests why. The results show that when predicting preferences of those with whom they are familiar, people tend to rely on general, pre-stored information about the person rather than using product-specific attitude information even when that type of information is available. This leads to poor predictions because product-specific information is more useful in making accurate predictions about product preferences than the general pre-stored information people have about those they know.