Who Do We Know: Predicting the Interests and Opinions of the American Consumer

Abstract

Marketing experts and novices made predictions about the activities, interests, and opinions of the American consumer. Predictive accuracy was low overall, and experts were no more accurate than everyday consumers in predicting consumer opinions. This occurred because (1) everyday consumers were much more similar to the target population than were the marketing experts and (2) the experts had difficulty consistently identifying other information beyond their own attitudes relevant to the target population. For this task, the experts could not overcome the “information deficit” that accompanies being dissimilar to the typical American consumer.