Scientific Gossip – Market (39-1)
Contains 100% gossip from concentrate
Market Research Update
Advertisers frequently sponsor psychological research that would otherwise go unfunded. The latest example is a Pitcairn University experiment involving celebrity product endorsements, and designed to test whether persuasiveness is more important than believabilility. The research group, led by Lee J. Fukowa and Melvin Vaught, proposes to create two television commercials for a new tampon. In the first version of the commercial, an attractive young woman will hold a tampon box and say, “I use them. Don't you?” The second version will be identical in every way, but will use film star Mel Gibson in place of the young woman.
Guaranteed Best-Sellers
Another market research experiment is being jointly funded by three major publishing firms. The Bunuel Institute is assembling “focus groups” of potential book purchasers. Each focus group member will be asked to participate in a discussion “about a new book, with a group of people who have just read the book.” Each participant will in fact be told no more than the book’s title, and will also be told that he or she should ‘fake the discussion the best you can because without you the group would be one person short.’ A technical writer will subsequently use the discussion transcript to write the book. The book's sales figures should indicate whether this is an effective method for writing best-sellers.
© Copyright 2003 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
This is a HotAIR classical feature. For a complete listing
of AIR features, see What's New.