Why it is so Hard to Predict Our Partner's Product Preferences: The Effect of Target Familiarity on Prediction Accuracy

11 Pages Posted: 3 Mar 2008

See all articles by Davy Lerouge

Davy Lerouge

Tilburg University - Department of Marketing

Luk Warlop

KU Leuven - Faculty of Business and Economics (FEB); BI Norwegian Business School

Date Written: 2007

Abstract

Many buying decisions require predictions of another person's product attitudes. Yet, consumers are often inaccurate predictors, even for familiar others. We provide strong evidence that target familiarity can even hurt accuracy in the presence of attitude feedback. Although overprojection and lack of product-specific attitude information have been identified as possible reasons for prediction in accuracy, our results suggest a retrieval explanation. When presented with product-specific attitude feedback, predictors adapted their level of projection and encoded the attitude information, but they did not use this information. Instead, they retrieved less diagnostic, pre-stored information about the familiar target stop redict their product attitudes.

Keywords: (pro-environmental) attitudes, Behavior, Claim, Cognitive, Consumer behavior, Consumption, Control, Control theory, Decision, Decisions, Demand, Ecological consumer behaviour, Effects, Ego depletion, Implications, Information, IT, Marketing, Model, Performance, Prediction, Predictions, Preference, P

Suggested Citation

Lerouge, Davy and Warlop, Luk, Why it is so Hard to Predict Our Partner's Product Preferences: The Effect of Target Familiarity on Prediction Accuracy (2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1099279 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1099279

Davy Lerouge (Contact Author)

Tilburg University - Department of Marketing ( email )

Tilburg, 5000 LE
Netherlands

Luk Warlop

KU Leuven - Faculty of Business and Economics (FEB) ( email )

Naamsestraat 69
Leuven, B-3000
Belgium

BI Norwegian Business School ( email )

Nydalsveien 37
Oslo, 0442
Norway

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