Uri Simonsohn - Faculty Research in Knowledge@Wharton

Marketing Crash Course: It's Not All Bad News When Consumers Collide with Wrong Information

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:52:02 EST

In 2007, the editors of Consumer Reports magazine had the unenviable job of admitting that they had published an erroneous ranking showing that a number of infant car seat models failed a safety test. Even though the data was later retracted, the news mortified parents and made headlines across the nation. Wharton professor Uri Simonsohn saw the case as an opportunity to test consumers' ability to ignore data after finding out that it's flawed, and how that information ultimately influenced purchase decisions. The results of his study are included in a forthcoming paper.

Predictions and Perceptions: Downloading Wisdom from Online Crowds

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:43:21 EST

Prediction markets, where people bet on everything from the likelihood that a movie will be a hit to the chance that a politician will become president to whether the stock market will go up or down, are in vogue. But because prediction markets have to be managed, they aren't always the ideal way to get information. Wharton professors Albert Saiz and Uri Simonsohn have found a cheaper way to deliver some of the same benefits. It's called an Internet search. The two professors argue in a new paper that the likelihood that a topic is discussed online, in relation to a given location, correlates with its relative prevalence in the real world.