“Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)
Found this link to the paper, since OP&#x27;s SciHub link has rotted: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dspace.mit.edu&#x2F;bitstream&#x2F;handle&#x2F;1721.1&#x2F;130136&#x2F;The Surprising Breadth of Harbingers of Failure June 2019.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dspace.mit.edu&#x2F;bitstream&#x2F;handle&#x2F;1721.1&#x2F;130136&#x2F;The ...</a><p>This is an interesting finding no matter what, but I think part of the splash comes from the idea that some people might be harbingers _independent of the rest of their identity_.  Since it&#x27;s not obvious that liking crystal pepsi and watermelon oreos are related, we can speculate that the people inherently like doomed products.<p>On my read, there&#x27;s a more boring hypothesis that is equally supported: in any given period, some demographics (age, income, cultural -- all the stuff that we know gets clustered geographically) are more profitable than others.  The products of the less profitable demographics get discontinued.<p>The main difference between this and the &quot;harbinger&quot; hypothesis is whether you can make surprising predictions.  The paper doesn&#x27;t really prove its predictive case because the calibration and holdout data come from different products in the same time period -- meaning that information about the time period leaks into the model that wouldn&#x27;t be available if you were truly running a prediction.<p>If you feel like you yourself are a harbinger of product doom, maybe you&#x27;re just a part of a group that isn&#x27;t making enough money for sellers!  Your choice whether to call that unfair or a victory :)