ABSTRACT
Marketing researchers often ask consumers to predict what they will want at a later time. When considering a leisure activity such as going to a museum, consumers often predict that they will enjoy the experience less if they go alone rather than with another person. When choosing a replacement for a choice that becomes unavailable, consumers tend to choose substitutes highly similar to their initial choice, even though consuming a more dissimilar substitute more effectively reduces their desire for their initial choice. Consider a research team who surveyed college students, asking whether they were influenced by ads on Facebook. None of the respondents said they were influenced by Facebook ads, so they concluded that Facebook ads do not work despite Facebook attracting billions of dollars in ad revenue. When consumers have trouble predicting their preferences, it is critical to ask questions indirectly, such as by using experiments.
