Consumers underpredict their ability to learn new products. (PhysOrg.com) -- After trying a new skill-based product, people think it will take them longer to learn how to use it than it actually will.This leads to them prematurely abandoning products that could be beneficial for them.The study was conducted by researchers at BYU, Carnegie Mellon, and Rice.
According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers often quit using products that would be beneficial for them in the long run because they experience a short period of pessimism during their initial encounter with skill-based products as varied as knitting needles and mobile devices. George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, Darron Billeter, assistant professor of marketing business management at Brigham Young University, and Ajay Kalra, professor of marketing at Rice University, find that consumers are overconfident in their ability to learn to use skill-based products before trying them out. Encyclopedia of Earth. Scitalks: Smart people on cool topics.