
The Surprising Breadth of Harbingers of Failure (2019) - hhs
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022243719867935
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ehmish
Coefficients of demographic characteristics of "Harbringers of failure" zip
codes:

Age -.2971

High school -.1710

Home value .2865

Bachelor’s degree .1197

Income .0646

White -.3919

Single family .4047

African American .2232

Multifamily .4132

Asian .3426

Distance -.3740

Hispanic .4854

Comp. distance -.4156

Coupon discount -.2333

Nbr. households .3160

Coupon frequency -.3741

Urban .4190

Unit price paid -.0523

Urban clusters -.1603

Meaning of these variables is here:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d8O9ja_p08w6cSkOPZ-L1sDZ...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d8O9ja_p08w6cSkOPZ-L1sDZU097AdIkw1qm8wJvoZw/edit?usp=sharing)

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cmroanirgo
Not only do your numbers not appear in the document you provide, one has to
wade through pages and reams of stats ... And your comment still makes no
sense to me.

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ehmish
Effectively what these mean is that, for example, if your product is popular
in places where a lot of people are young white people, in a single family
household, in the countryside, without a university degree it is not likely to
be successful.

If your product is popular in places with a lot of older hispanic people, with
a university degree, who live in the city, in an apartment building, it's more
likely to be successful

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pedalpete
Anybody else feel like they are on both sides of this? Do these people REALLY
only end up supporting the products that end up failing?

The first time I tried a 1st gen iPod, I was amazed and had to have it. Then
bought a Zune HD when it came out, and kept it long into when everyone else
had moved on.

Windows Phone, yup, I was a supporter. But was also doing yoga, WHM,
intermittent fasting, etc. I was "barefoot" running before Born to Run came
out, I rode a single speed mountain bike which never really became a thing.

I didn't read the entire report because I don't have an account, but are the
people who are supposedly the "Harbingers of Failure" just more likely to be
early adopters who are more likely trying new things and therefore they end up
liking and supporting things that end up failing?

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peteradio
Lol, wouldn't be surprised to find myself in one of these "loser" zip codes.
Wish I could read the whole article rather than just the abstract.

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chronicsunshine
[https://sci-hub.tw/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...](https://sci-
hub.tw/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022243719867935)

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benibela
I feel like a software harbinger

Whenever I decide to use some software, it vanishes in insignificance. QBasic,
Delphi, FreePascal/Lazarus, Micrografx Picture Publisher, Conitec 3D Game
Studio, Java Applets, Mercurial hosted on SourceForge or Bitbucket, QCodeEdit,
XQuery

~~~
jtbayly
That's funny. Sad, too. Maybe you are just different enough from others that
you pick differently.

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HackOfAllTrades
I started reading this article, then found myself skimming more and more as it
became flakier and flakier. Now, because I just skimmed most of it, I may be
missing some important points -- but my impression is that the authors are so
bound up in the details & statistical tests that they can't see any big
picture.

For example, in discussing household moves they talk about which zipcodes
people choose to live in, as if they had perfect freedom of choice. But I
don't see where they account for median income. How are we to know if people
in a "harbinger" zipcode can even afford to move to a "Group 1" zipcode? Or if
it would be a convenient distance from their employment?

I simply can't see putting much or any faith in these "results".

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rossdavidh
My people!

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tonyedgecombe
I wonder what drives this, is it just poor decision making ability.

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idclip
Probably the same thing that makes people more likely to root for underdogs.

Avoiding the mainstream, etc.

These people arent as broken as this article may make it seem.

Its interesting how these zip codes are housing bubble resistant for example!
Id wager these people arent trying to get rich, just trying to live a decent
life and be nice to each other.

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scandox
The ultimate crime

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idclip
Not to mention they're telling us that bird of a feather like to flock
together, and giving it a name such as “harbingers of failure” ...

Modern Marketing came out of WWII Psychwarfare efforts, gotta keep that in
mind.

