22 ms·

“Harbinger households” consistently buy products that get discontinued (2019)

241 points by tobr 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
euroderf 4y ago
Aura beer, Finland early 90s. They "brought it back" a few years ago but it just ain't the same. Le sigh.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  Every time I taste something I liked in the past and feel like it's not the same, I think if that's my perception which has changed more significantly than the product.
  - rvba 4y ago
    Dont they usually change the recipes? Cheaper raw materials (e.g. high fructose corn syroup instead of sugar for soft drinks), different production methods (same line used for all products but different flavoring), various cost optimizations that compromise the quality..
    - qwerty456127 4y ago
      They probably/usually do but I am not sure if this is the major reason behind the change in hod way I perceive the taste. I suspect the changes in myself may play a more definitive role in this.
    - krisoft 4y ago
      > Dont they usually change the recipes? Sometimes. Sometimes it also might be a process change. There is a desert people in Hungary quite like. It's basically a bar of cottage cheese coated in chocolate. [1] One day the factory manufacturing it received a huge amount of inquires about a recipe change. The only problem was that they haven't changed anything. As far as they could tell everything was the same as it always used to be. But still there were a lot of very vocal costumers demanding the old taste so they went and investigated. According to the story what happened is that the logistic provider improved the refrigeration in the supply chain. Because of the cottage cheese these deserts require refrigeration. Of course they were already using refrigerated trucks, but there was some transshipment centre where the refrigeration was missing or not very effective. And what changed is that they fixed that. So basically the old taste, the one people demanded back, was the result of the cottage cheese just a tad bit bit ripe from the heat during transport. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BAr%C3%B3_Rudi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BAr%C3%B3_Rudi
      - clankyclanker 4y ago
        That’s fascinating, and not in the article at all, that I saw.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Some companies spend an inordinate amount of money and time to preserve the taste (Budweiser apparently has tasters who travel the various plants making sure it all tastes the same, like water should), but many other things have had significant drifts over time (and it's hard to compare as you need actual double/triple blind tests to even begin to get accurate data).
- the_imp 4y ago
  Young's AAA, UK early 00s. They never brought it back. Ye olde sigh.
designium 4y ago
It would be interesting to see the relationship of this type of cohort with income level.
mhb 4y ago
So everyone who lives in the vicinity of a Trader Joe's?
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I have a lot of choice words for whoever decided to discontinue the red TJ’s jalapeño hot sauce. https://www.traderjoesgroceryreviews.com/trader-joes-hot-sauce-with-jalapenos/ https://www.traderjoesgroceryreviews.com/trader-joes-hot-sau...
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Yeah I really miss that sauce
  - danuker 4y ago
    Guess what I do: wash and slice up some peppers, stick them tightly in a jar, and fill with vinegar so that no air bubbles are left. Not quite a sauce, but it works for me. Stores for months in a fridge. Communist Romanian recipe.
    - andybak 4y ago
      How does that not just store forever? I thought that was the point of pickling.
      - krageon 4y ago
        With stuff like this it depends on how you use it (f.e. it's possible they use it up over a few months, or that after that time there is not enough liquid left to cover the vegetable mass)
      - oasisbob 4y ago
        Among other problems, Botulism takes all the fun out of traditional pickling recipes.
        4y ago
Cupertino95014 4y ago
I remember reading, a long time ago, that some fashion trend-follower said that it was impossible to determine what was cool soon enough to profit from it. By the time you figure it out, it's gone. But it IS possible to figure out who is cool: you can find the people who regularly jump on trends before anyone else, and see what they buy. But this! This is almost as good: you can figure who is NOT cool.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  And then you buy tons of what they're buying because it'll be discontinued and in high demand soon.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  I wonder if we can figure out who is consistently wrong, put them on juries, and then whoever they say is guilty gets acquitted and whoever they say is not guilty gets convicted. Finally, a system of perfect justice.
- dools 4y ago
  I believe the term is cool hunting. I remember seeing a doco about it a while back
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    I think what I saw was also a New Yorker article, but it's probably been well-circulated.
- true_repairman 4y ago
  If this would work for stocks aswell... https://xkcd.com/2270/ https://xkcd.com/2270/
- i_like_waiting 4y ago
  It's nicely described in book Tipping point from Malcolm Gladwell. Good choice for audiobook to add in playlist
- 4y ago
fortran77 4y ago
Original paper here: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20Surprising%20Breadth%20of%20Harbingers%20of%20Failure%20June%202019.pdf;jsessionid=7BFBDE5A52A7F999275525BD134C86FB?sequence=2 https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20...
- jrumbut 4y ago
  Does it have the zip codes though? That's what we want (besides our continued condiments and shaving creams).
  - MrPoush 4y ago
    There was some discussion on reddit about this last year, and the consensus is that the zip codes were not published and likely wouldn't be. One person worked the paper's methodology backwards and came up with a list of potential candidate cities: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/i3hb3c/til_that_there_are_harbinger_zip_codes_these/g0c0dz5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/i3hb3c/til_t... Kind of shocked me that I'm nowhere near any of those, as I feel like one of those harbingers (and I feel no desire to move to any of those places).
Terry_Roll 4y ago
In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations "Harbinger Households" are called Laggards in scholarly circles. So to use the word "Harbinger" which for most people will have greater negative connotations by virtue of the common phrase "harbinger of doom" in most English speaking people's lexicon, would suggest an element of psychological profiling is being carried out in plain site on ycombinator, although it can be played down as just a clickbait headline, no different to the techniques used by journalists and editors of "reputable" news outlets. Either way, its getting even easier to identify the people who are worth manipulating to win elections in a country, rendering the election process not "free and fair process" so easily trumpeted out by Western democracies. I might just place a bet on Trump winning the next US Presidential election because there are more Republicans owning and running a business than Democrats! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2016/10/12/study-republicans-are-24-percent-more-likely-than-democrats-to-be-business-owners/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201...
- cma 4y ago
  The article is using the term companies use, because: customers buying their products are harbingers of doom for the product (unless they got causation wrong on the coupon use for heavily discoubted possibly discontinued goods...) The last half of you comment seems completely unrelated to the article?
  - Terry_Roll 4y ago
    Actually these 3 are the one's who started to coin the phrase. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.13.0415 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.13.0415 This is another attempt to run with the idea with some variation. https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty-research/sites/faculty-research/files/finance/The%20Surprising%20Breadth%20of%20Harbingers%20of%20Failure%20April%202017.pdf https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty-research/sites/faculty... Harbinger Customers is also a phrase coined. Its out there, its just a question of time before someone picks up the ball and runs with it. You can track idea's snowballing online, like this one. Research papers like this tend to have more gravity if they are focused at those with money to spend, so this latest twist will certainly get some attention from businesses. Savvy Political Campaign organisers will also be aware of this development when targeting their efforts for future upcoming US Presidential elections with current legislation in place. The Surveillance Capitalism that exists for businesses to identify and target individuals can equally be applied to political campaigns, helped along with favourable media coverage from political donors product or service advertising budget to sever the direct link to comply with legislation. Its not a cynical take on the world, its the nuanced way the world works, something even the press dont like drawing attention to, so you dont ever see any decent investigative journalism now a days. The world is all bought and paid for, as some would say!
coldtea 4y ago
>The researchers don't claim a causal relationship between these different factors — donating to losing political candidates doesn't make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, for example — but rather speculate that there is an "unobserved intervening variable" that explains both factors. Being older, poorer, and "out of touch" with what's fashionable, politically, culturally, and market wise -- because you have other problems and you're at the very far side demographically of anybody marketeers, press, etc. attempts to even influence...
- mpascale00 4y ago
  I suspect anything marketed towards older people is likely to decline as that population shrinks. If this is true then in many ways it may be a good thing for this population that products are created for their preferences at all.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It could also be that the very departments that put out Crystal Pepsi and bad political candidates are well-stocked with the same type of people who buy them - but it's just a small market. Or it could be that they tend to lean toward new stuff, and 80% of new stuff is crap, so 80% will be discontinued relatively quickly.
jimnotgym 4y ago
>under performing real estate There are clearly no harbingers in my county then!
- bombcar 4y ago
  "underperforming" could be "went up 100% whilst other places tripled".
iancmceachern 4y ago
Anyone else want brooks to bring back their LSD jacket in bright yellow?
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
In a real free market / local democracy, someone would cater to the niche and everyone can have their own thing. When it's not happening, it's a sign that the free market is being suppressed, culturally if not legally. Either Harbinger households are not willing to to pay extra 10% for what they really want, or market is controlled by trillion dollar companies with billion dollar CEOs who put their egos above extra profits that will not make a difference in their lives.
mellavora 4y ago
All these posts and no mention of the LM13700 end of life? https://modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=248954 https://modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=248954 The chip which is at the heart (or maybe the liver-- it makes a great filter as well) of so many synthesizers?
JofArnold 4y ago
This is me and my mum. To the point where if I find something I really like which might not last more than a few years, I buy two. This occurs in many domains from breakfast cereals to shirts to bicycle tyres!
- afandian 4y ago
  There’s a complex curve though. Clothes which you wear for a while, good idea. Cereal? If you stockpile medium term you’ll get more attached to it and fall harder when it’s withdrawn.
  - JofArnold 4y ago
    You're so right about the cereal as that has indeed happened! But then my outlook on life in general is "savor what you can, because tomorrow it could be gone". So while it's a pain when do stop making it, I do take time to enjoy especially delicious cereals so when they disappear for good I know I've not taken them for granted.
zogomoox 4y ago
In the movie 'the cooler' (2003) people like this are given jobs in casinos to attenuate the luck of the gamblers.
hrdwdmrbl 4y ago
Law of large numbers?
justsomeguy123 4y ago
How interesting boingboing added a scihub link, but their link is to an expired domain. The correct link is https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0022243719867935 https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0022243719867935 Harbinger sounds so negative. How about long tail or hipster?
yieldcrv 4y ago
the flip side of this is if losers latch on to your product, just discontinue the product or your campaign immediately, which is possibly what happens
foxes 4y ago
Lmao from reading the replies here, and from how many the article seems to apply to, I’m glad the average hn user doesn’t get to decide what the market likes >enormous laptops with hot swappable bezels and deprecated ports >small phones >other outdated dead technologies
- bombcar 4y ago
  It would be amusing to create a picture of the "stereotype" which would be a person with an absolutely massive laptop (nearly a luggable) and an itty bitty phone, among other things.
  - nominusllc 4y ago
    phone-in-hand is starting to die out. nobody in my social circle really takes them off the desk anymore, and nobody installs new apps. a lot of us realized it's so cringe seeing people crawl into their phones at gatherings, after covid people just started making arrangements and then meeting up. the only time i see phones come out is to take a picture for your parents these days.
nottorp 4y ago
So ... the whole world is a harbinger household for Google products?
Cenk 4y ago
Link to paper (it’s Open Access): https://oa.mg/work/10.1177/0022243719867935 https://oa.mg/work/10.1177/0022243719867935
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sp332 4y ago
It's gotten to the point that I'll just wait for something I like to stop getting made and then buy it in bulk when it's on clearance. This habit helps in other cases too, like when I waited for blu-ray to win the format war, then bought an HD-DVD drive and literally every single interesting HD-DVD movie ever made for the price of one blu-ray drive.
mkl95 4y ago
> donate to losing political candidates Is donating to political candidates that common? It sounds pretty odd.
- 130e13a 4y ago
  i could be completely wrong here, but the concept of donating money to politicians or political parties seems to me (as a european) to be mainly an american thing. though i guess even there it's probably a rather small percentage of the population that actually cares enough about individual candidates to donate money to them.
- naturalauction 4y ago
  I don’t think it’s particularly uncommon in the US and the donation data is public. This is just the first thing I found on Google, Bernie Sanders had over 5 million individual contributions like halfway through his last campaign [0]. Not to mention that campaign donations can also be for local elections. [0] https://time.com/5757711/bernie-sanders-34-million-q4-fundraising/?amp=true https://time.com/5757711/bernie-sanders-34-million-q4-fundra...
jjeaff 4y ago
This seems to happen to me a lot, although I think for different reasons than this study found. At times, I will spend an inordinate amount of time and brainpower researching products and comparing them for value. I will scour the Internet for the best price, research the maker, look for alternative brandings of the same thing and then look for additional discounts and deals and purchasing schemes. I think that sometimes, I end up finding that product that companies lose money on and those products or services tend not to last. Or at least not in the form that I was previously purchasing them.
hyperpallium2 4y ago
Very early adopters (innovators/enthusiasts) like to try new stuff. Most new stuff doesn't work out.
evrydayhustling 4y ago
Found this link to the paper, since OP's SciHub link has rotted: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20Surprising%20Breadth%20of%20Harbingers%20of%20Failure%20June%202019.pdf https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20... 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's not obvious that liking crystal pepsi and watermelon oreos are related, we can speculate that the people inherently like doomed products. On my read, there'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. The main difference between this and the "harbinger" hypothesis is whether you can make surprising predictions. The paper doesn'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't be available if you were truly running a prediction. If you feel like you yourself are a harbinger of product doom, maybe you're just a part of a group that isn't making enough money for sellers! Your choice whether to call that unfair or a victory :)
- lordgrenville 4y ago
  > Found this link to the paper Hurts my eyes. SciHub URL + DOI (10.1177/0022243719867935) works for me.
- avereveard 4y ago
  Alternative: people that like to experiment are the first jumping on new products, and people that like routines aren't - that would be enough to bias the experimenters into the harbinger group, and it would be useful to check if there's an overlap when measuring for household that were early adopter of successful products
  - evrydayhustling 4y ago
    Good thought - people with "high variance" tastes might buy an unusual number of duds, but they might also be more likely to pick breakout products. An analysis for that would need to include degrees of product success, not just survival.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Got my “is this data mining” sceptical hat on.
fallingfrog 4y ago
I was hoping to see some red meat in the article in terms of who these harbinger households are, what kinds of products they are buying or politicians they support, so that I could either judge them for their poor taste or empathize with their misunderstood genius. Alas, the article seems to lack those kinds of details, except for the examples of Diet Crystal Pepsi and Colgate Kitchen Entrees. Both of those products sound baffling and horrible to me.
- nominusllc 4y ago
  Crystal pepsi was delicious. Clearly you have some parental neglect issues to work through, because most people know this.
  - StrictDabbler 4y ago
    Crystal pepsi tasted like normal Pepsi but it didn't stain your teeth brown. We, as a society, drink intense dyes every day largely because of the legacy of prohibition... weirdly colored sodas were the social camouflage for "medicinal" liquor. Surely this brightly colored froth-tube can't be harmful! This rolled into the marketing illustrations of the mid-20th century. On a utilitarian level all sodas should be clear.
    - nominusllc 4y ago
      This comment resonates with me. I want to have a soda, but without all the dyes. Or any drink, or even foods for that matter like salmon that is dyed pink.
  - fallingfrog 4y ago
    Hahaha! I see your point but.. having "Crystal Pepsi" just seems weird from a branding point of view, why not just call it Sprite? Like, what's the expectation of what that would taste like? It's like saying "7-UP root beer", it's just really not clear what flavor I should expect upon drinking it. I have the same issues with other postmodern mashup fast foods, like, I've seen taco pizza and pizza flavored tacos. Make up your mind, are you a pizza or a taco? Such an abomination is a challenge to all existing categories of being.
ravenstine 4y ago
This happens to me any time something is either mango or watermelon flavored.
patwolf 4y ago
A lot of the insight in this paper seems pretty obvious when given any thought. > Households that leave harbinger zip codes tend to go to other harbinger zip codes. Since they also claim that house prices in harbinger zip codes increase less than other areas, then this just sounds like people from poor areas moving to other poor areas. > The findings indicate that harbinger zip codes are less likely than other zip codes to donate to the candidates who receive the most donations in their three-digit zip code. There can be huge differences between two areas with the same three-digit zip codes. A rural or suburban area can easily have the same three-digits as a downtown urban area. It would make sense for a people in two starkly different areas to support different political candidates and for the candidate supported by the more populous urban area to win.
kloch 4y ago
I should contract myself out to shopping malls. - Any store I notice as I walk by might be gone in 2 years - Any store I walk into is likely to be gone in 1 year - Any store I actually buy something from has about 6 months left... (this only applies to small stores. The anchors can live on in zombie mode for decades)
notacoward 4y ago
I'm a bit like this with restaurants. I know it's a super-tough business with high turnover already, but places I like have seemed especially prone to failure. Three in one location in my home town. At least three in Seattle (which residents will be pleased to know I no longer visit). Almost eerie. When it comes to consumer products, I've just come to accept that my favorite beers or sodas or cheeses or candies will only be available for a short while, but I don't think that's anything to do with the harbinger phenomenon. I'm just a bit more willing than most to step away from my already-favorite brands and try something new, which means trying lots of things that have an inherently higher chance of not gaining traction in the market.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
My wife is a harbinger of doom for restaurants. If she really likes a place that guarantees it will either close or change so she no longer favors it. I think it's that she's looking at value as well as the food, she's very good at finding places that aren't charging enough for good food.
ggm 4y ago
This.Happens.To.Me.All.The.Time. All.The.Time. that Amazing Neutrogena conditioner, which was really good and lasted a year? Gone: if it lasts a year, its too good. that original low-sugar chex? gone. we invented three new flavours. that jam? gone. butter? gone. that cut of meat? gone. those pens? I mean pentel pens. How can pentel can an entire line of really good, fine writer ballpens? Gone. Sorry dude, it was you and your partner, thats IT. we checked inventory, we were shipping the last box to your category killer store two years before we canned it. It was you and some wierd hobo in Chiba were the last ones buying. Wilkinson Sword made 30cl shaving foam cans, mostly supplied to the airline business for Business class passengers. Gone. That was the good stuff. I have to scrabble around for a Nivea gel in the same form factor, its hard to find. My partner and I feel like the harbinger of doom for products a lot, we have dreamed of renting ourselves out to the highest bidder, to go and buy competitor product. We even called ourselves this before I read the term. We joked about being the kiss of death in shops, and then it became un-funny to the point we're scared to tell shopkeepers how much we like products sometimes. (for the ones we want, we'd buy a LOT. That neutrogena shampoo is $40 a bottle now in the ebay hoarder bins. Neutrogena triple moisture daily deep conditioner. It used to be like $7. I have two bottles coming via a reseller, thats another year before we have to find a different conditioner.) Grape Nuts. They're next. Trust me, Post is going to be reading the interwebs and my supplies of Grape Nuts will dry up. Wierdly, we are high income, we are not buying dead real estate and out voting useless candidates (Green, Labor, our candidates do very well). So I think the article has over-compensated somehow. Maybe we're up market Harbingers of Doom. Bespoke. Artisanal.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Shoes are this way for a lot of people, in that some of us can keep a pair of shoes long enough that the next fashion cycle has happened and you can't find anything like that again. I got to the point where if I really liked a pair of shoes, I'd buy a second pair and throw them in the closet for nine months, and cross my fingers that I like the shoes in the second refresh more than I liked the ones in the first one. And lets talk about ya'll motherfuckers wearing jeans that make your eyes pop out. Stores I used to shop at, some of them don't even have regular jeans anymore. I was the first person off the tight jeans bandwagon the last time that went around, and I'm not jumping on this one, even if that means I have to shop at thrift stores until you all wake up on your own, or until your doctor tells you to stop wearing those if you want kids.
wadefletch 4y ago
[flagged]
anigbrowl 4y ago
I read the whole paper and the supplementary information, but nowhere could I find the list of zipcodes.
benj111 4y ago
Considering the number of times they used the word Harbinger, you would have thought they'd learn to spell it correctly, or at least consistently.
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  Where is it spelled incorrectly or inconsistently? I hate how much they used it in the article (20 times), already a kind of a funny word set up for semantic satiation - but I didn't notice those errors.
  - matthewsmith2 4y ago
    There are multiple uses of Habringer as the spelling
    - jhugo 4y ago
      All of the mistakes are in this paragraph: > The researchers also claim that harbinger households voluntarily cluster: that when a harbinger household moves, it is likely that it will move to another habringer ZIP code (and nonhabringers move to nonhabringer households). Moreover, harbingers don't appear to learn their preferences from one another — a nonhabringer household that locates in a harbinger ZIP code doesn't alter its purchasing and political contributions to "loser" products and candidates.
      - standardly 4y ago
        Satiate me semantically please sir
    - mistersquid 4y ago
      > There are multiple uses of Habringer as the spelling A “Habringer” is someone who brings the “Ha”.
      - elSidCampeador 4y ago
carlmr 4y ago
>They tend to make above-average use of coupons, and the coupons they use have above-average values. Isn't this kind of expected? Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. The higher the coupon value, the more desperate the company to get rid of this stock. So if these households like to coupon a lot, that means they accept less than ideal market fit for a price reduction.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. In my experience working retail, this just isn't the case, in general - unless it has changed in the last decade. Coupons have a couple of purposes: Loyalty and foot traffic, much like sales, and often on things they make a decent profit on. You wind up seeing Tide laundry soap, Gillette razor blades, and so on. CVS gives coupons on CVS brand items to promote their store brand... which keeps folks coming back to buy stuff they make a decent profit on. Coupons are very likely to happen on new products, too, as a way to entice folks to buy them. It also costs money to put out coupons, either physical or digital, in no small part because you have many retailers that need reimbursed and coupon fraud is definitely an issue as well. Simply put: Coupons are an advertising device. Often, products that aren't selling well are either taken back by the manufacturer (to be sold at places that sell discontinued stuff) or marked down by the retailer with absolutely no fanfare (like a coupon). Folks that coupon a lot (or extrememly) are often getting new or established products at a good price instead of things they won't find in 3 months.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Coupons also allow price segmentation - they can sell that Tide soap for $20 to those who will pay it (and not bother with the coupon) and then offer almost perpetual coupons to those who know (and will bother), selling it for two prices simultaneously. Things that aren't selling get discounted or clearanced, which can be fun when they overlap - you get the original coupons designed to promote the product, and the product flopped, so it's on discount, but the system still allows the coupon to apply to it - sometimes to nearly zero or even negative (most registers don't allow negative amounts anymore).

241 points by tobr 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

euroderf 4y ago

Aura beer, Finland early 90s. They "brought it back" a few years ago but it just ain't the same. Le sigh.

qwerty456127 4y ago
Every time I taste something I liked in the past and feel like it's not the same, I think if that's my perception which has changed more significantly than the product.
- rvba 4y ago
  Dont they usually change the recipes? Cheaper raw materials (e.g. high fructose corn syroup instead of sugar for soft drinks), different production methods (same line used for all products but different flavoring), various cost optimizations that compromise the quality..
  - qwerty456127 4y ago
    They probably/usually do but I am not sure if this is the major reason behind the change in hod way I perceive the taste. I suspect the changes in myself may play a more definitive role in this.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > Dont they usually change the recipes? Sometimes. Sometimes it also might be a process change. There is a desert people in Hungary quite like. It's basically a bar of cottage cheese coated in chocolate. [1] One day the factory manufacturing it received a huge amount of inquires about a recipe change. The only problem was that they haven't changed anything. As far as they could tell everything was the same as it always used to be. But still there were a lot of very vocal costumers demanding the old taste so they went and investigated. According to the story what happened is that the logistic provider improved the refrigeration in the supply chain. Because of the cottage cheese these deserts require refrigeration. Of course they were already using refrigerated trucks, but there was some transshipment centre where the refrigeration was missing or not very effective. And what changed is that they fixed that. So basically the old taste, the one people demanded back, was the result of the cottage cheese just a tad bit bit ripe from the heat during transport. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BAr%C3%B3_Rudi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BAr%C3%B3_Rudi
    - clankyclanker 4y ago
      That’s fascinating, and not in the article at all, that I saw.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Some companies spend an inordinate amount of money and time to preserve the taste (Budweiser apparently has tasters who travel the various plants making sure it all tastes the same, like water should), but many other things have had significant drifts over time (and it's hard to compare as you need actual double/triple blind tests to even begin to get accurate data).
the_imp 4y ago
Young's AAA, UK early 00s. They never brought it back. Ye olde sigh.

designium 4y ago

It would be interesting to see the relationship of this type of cohort with income level.

mhb 4y ago

So everyone who lives in the vicinity of a Trader Joe's?

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I have a lot of choice words for whoever decided to discontinue the red TJ’s jalapeño hot sauce. https://www.traderjoesgroceryreviews.com/trader-joes-hot-sauce-with-jalapenos/ https://www.traderjoesgroceryreviews.com/trader-joes-hot-sau...
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Yeah I really miss that sauce
- danuker 4y ago
  Guess what I do: wash and slice up some peppers, stick them tightly in a jar, and fill with vinegar so that no air bubbles are left. Not quite a sauce, but it works for me. Stores for months in a fridge. Communist Romanian recipe.
  - andybak 4y ago
    How does that not just store forever? I thought that was the point of pickling.
    - krageon 4y ago
      With stuff like this it depends on how you use it (f.e. it's possible they use it up over a few months, or that after that time there is not enough liquid left to cover the vegetable mass)
    - oasisbob 4y ago
      Among other problems, Botulism takes all the fun out of traditional pickling recipes.
      - 4y ago

Cupertino95014 4y ago

I remember reading, a long time ago, that some fashion trend-follower said that it was impossible to determine what was cool soon enough to profit from it. By the time you figure it out, it's gone. But it IS possible to figure out who is cool: you can find the people who regularly jump on trends before anyone else, and see what they buy. But this! This is almost as good: you can figure who is NOT cool.

moffkalast 4y ago
And then you buy tons of what they're buying because it'll be discontinued and in high demand soon.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
I wonder if we can figure out who is consistently wrong, put them on juries, and then whoever they say is guilty gets acquitted and whoever they say is not guilty gets convicted. Finally, a system of perfect justice.
dools 4y ago
I believe the term is cool hunting. I remember seeing a doco about it a while back
- Cupertino95014 4y ago
  I think what I saw was also a New Yorker article, but it's probably been well-circulated.
true_repairman 4y ago
If this would work for stocks aswell... https://xkcd.com/2270/ https://xkcd.com/2270/
i_like_waiting 4y ago
It's nicely described in book Tipping point from Malcolm Gladwell. Good choice for audiobook to add in playlist
4y ago

fortran77 4y ago

Original paper here: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20Surprising%20Breadth%20of%20Harbingers%20of%20Failure%20June%202019.pdf;jsessionid=7BFBDE5A52A7F999275525BD134C86FB?sequence=2 https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20...

jrumbut 4y ago
Does it have the zip codes though? That's what we want (besides our continued condiments and shaving creams).
- MrPoush 4y ago
  There was some discussion on reddit about this last year, and the consensus is that the zip codes were not published and likely wouldn't be. One person worked the paper's methodology backwards and came up with a list of potential candidate cities: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/i3hb3c/til_that_there_are_harbinger_zip_codes_these/g0c0dz5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/i3hb3c/til_t... Kind of shocked me that I'm nowhere near any of those, as I feel like one of those harbingers (and I feel no desire to move to any of those places).

Terry_Roll 4y ago

In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations "Harbinger Households" are called Laggards in scholarly circles. So to use the word "Harbinger" which for most people will have greater negative connotations by virtue of the common phrase "harbinger of doom" in most English speaking people's lexicon, would suggest an element of psychological profiling is being carried out in plain site on ycombinator, although it can be played down as just a clickbait headline, no different to the techniques used by journalists and editors of "reputable" news outlets. Either way, its getting even easier to identify the people who are worth manipulating to win elections in a country, rendering the election process not "free and fair process" so easily trumpeted out by Western democracies. I might just place a bet on Trump winning the next US Presidential election because there are more Republicans owning and running a business than Democrats! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2016/10/12/study-republicans-are-24-percent-more-likely-than-democrats-to-be-business-owners/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201...

cma 4y ago
The article is using the term companies use, because: customers buying their products are harbingers of doom for the product (unless they got causation wrong on the coupon use for heavily discoubted possibly discontinued goods...) The last half of you comment seems completely unrelated to the article?
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
  Actually these 3 are the one's who started to coin the phrase. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.13.0415 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmr.13.0415 This is another attempt to run with the idea with some variation. https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty-research/sites/faculty-research/files/finance/The%20Surprising%20Breadth%20of%20Harbingers%20of%20Failure%20April%202017.pdf https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty-research/sites/faculty... Harbinger Customers is also a phrase coined. Its out there, its just a question of time before someone picks up the ball and runs with it. You can track idea's snowballing online, like this one. Research papers like this tend to have more gravity if they are focused at those with money to spend, so this latest twist will certainly get some attention from businesses. Savvy Political Campaign organisers will also be aware of this development when targeting their efforts for future upcoming US Presidential elections with current legislation in place. The Surveillance Capitalism that exists for businesses to identify and target individuals can equally be applied to political campaigns, helped along with favourable media coverage from political donors product or service advertising budget to sever the direct link to comply with legislation. Its not a cynical take on the world, its the nuanced way the world works, something even the press dont like drawing attention to, so you dont ever see any decent investigative journalism now a days. The world is all bought and paid for, as some would say!

coldtea 4y ago

>The researchers don't claim a causal relationship between these different factors — donating to losing political candidates doesn't make you prefer Crystal Pepsi, for example — but rather speculate that there is an "unobserved intervening variable" that explains both factors. Being older, poorer, and "out of touch" with what's fashionable, politically, culturally, and market wise -- because you have other problems and you're at the very far side demographically of anybody marketeers, press, etc. attempts to even influence...

mpascale00 4y ago
I suspect anything marketed towards older people is likely to decline as that population shrinks. If this is true then in many ways it may be a good thing for this population that products are created for their preferences at all.
bombcar 4y ago
It could also be that the very departments that put out Crystal Pepsi and bad political candidates are well-stocked with the same type of people who buy them - but it's just a small market. Or it could be that they tend to lean toward new stuff, and 80% of new stuff is crap, so 80% will be discontinued relatively quickly.

jimnotgym 4y ago

>under performing real estate There are clearly no harbingers in my county then!

bombcar 4y ago
"underperforming" could be "went up 100% whilst other places tripled".

iancmceachern 4y ago

Anyone else want brooks to bring back their LSD jacket in bright yellow?

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

In a real free market / local democracy, someone would cater to the niche and everyone can have their own thing. When it's not happening, it's a sign that the free market is being suppressed, culturally if not legally. Either Harbinger households are not willing to to pay extra 10% for what they really want, or market is controlled by trillion dollar companies with billion dollar CEOs who put their egos above extra profits that will not make a difference in their lives.

mellavora 4y ago

All these posts and no mention of the LM13700 end of life? https://modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=248954 https://modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=248954 The chip which is at the heart (or maybe the liver-- it makes a great filter as well) of so many synthesizers?

JofArnold 4y ago

This is me and my mum. To the point where if I find something I really like which might not last more than a few years, I buy two. This occurs in many domains from breakfast cereals to shirts to bicycle tyres!

afandian 4y ago
There’s a complex curve though. Clothes which you wear for a while, good idea. Cereal? If you stockpile medium term you’ll get more attached to it and fall harder when it’s withdrawn.
- JofArnold 4y ago
  You're so right about the cereal as that has indeed happened! But then my outlook on life in general is "savor what you can, because tomorrow it could be gone". So while it's a pain when do stop making it, I do take time to enjoy especially delicious cereals so when they disappear for good I know I've not taken them for granted.

zogomoox 4y ago

In the movie 'the cooler' (2003) people like this are given jobs in casinos to attenuate the luck of the gamblers.

hrdwdmrbl 4y ago

Law of large numbers?

justsomeguy123 4y ago

How interesting boingboing added a scihub link, but their link is to an expired domain. The correct link is https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0022243719867935 https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0022243719867935 Harbinger sounds so negative. How about long tail or hipster?

yieldcrv 4y ago

the flip side of this is if losers latch on to your product, just discontinue the product or your campaign immediately, which is possibly what happens

foxes 4y ago

Lmao from reading the replies here, and from how many the article seems to apply to, I’m glad the average hn user doesn’t get to decide what the market likes >enormous laptops with hot swappable bezels and deprecated ports >small phones >other outdated dead technologies

bombcar 4y ago
It would be amusing to create a picture of the "stereotype" which would be a person with an absolutely massive laptop (nearly a luggable) and an itty bitty phone, among other things.
- nominusllc 4y ago
  phone-in-hand is starting to die out. nobody in my social circle really takes them off the desk anymore, and nobody installs new apps. a lot of us realized it's so cringe seeing people crawl into their phones at gatherings, after covid people just started making arrangements and then meeting up. the only time i see phones come out is to take a picture for your parents these days.

nottorp 4y ago

So ... the whole world is a harbinger household for Google products?

Cenk 4y ago

Link to paper (it’s Open Access): https://oa.mg/work/10.1177/0022243719867935 https://oa.mg/work/10.1177/0022243719867935

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sp332 4y ago

It's gotten to the point that I'll just wait for something I like to stop getting made and then buy it in bulk when it's on clearance. This habit helps in other cases too, like when I waited for blu-ray to win the format war, then bought an HD-DVD drive and literally every single interesting HD-DVD movie ever made for the price of one blu-ray drive.

mkl95 4y ago

> donate to losing political candidates Is donating to political candidates that common? It sounds pretty odd.

130e13a 4y ago
i could be completely wrong here, but the concept of donating money to politicians or political parties seems to me (as a european) to be mainly an american thing. though i guess even there it's probably a rather small percentage of the population that actually cares enough about individual candidates to donate money to them.
naturalauction 4y ago
I don’t think it’s particularly uncommon in the US and the donation data is public. This is just the first thing I found on Google, Bernie Sanders had over 5 million individual contributions like halfway through his last campaign [0]. Not to mention that campaign donations can also be for local elections. [0] https://time.com/5757711/bernie-sanders-34-million-q4-fundraising/?amp=true https://time.com/5757711/bernie-sanders-34-million-q4-fundra...

jjeaff 4y ago

This seems to happen to me a lot, although I think for different reasons than this study found. At times, I will spend an inordinate amount of time and brainpower researching products and comparing them for value. I will scour the Internet for the best price, research the maker, look for alternative brandings of the same thing and then look for additional discounts and deals and purchasing schemes. I think that sometimes, I end up finding that product that companies lose money on and those products or services tend not to last. Or at least not in the form that I was previously purchasing them.

hyperpallium2 4y ago

Very early adopters (innovators/enthusiasts) like to try new stuff. Most new stuff doesn't work out.

evrydayhustling 4y ago

Found this link to the paper, since OP's SciHub link has rotted: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20Surprising%20Breadth%20of%20Harbingers%20of%20Failure%20June%202019.pdf https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130136/The%20... 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's not obvious that liking crystal pepsi and watermelon oreos are related, we can speculate that the people inherently like doomed products. On my read, there'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. The main difference between this and the "harbinger" hypothesis is whether you can make surprising predictions. The paper doesn'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't be available if you were truly running a prediction. If you feel like you yourself are a harbinger of product doom, maybe you're just a part of a group that isn't making enough money for sellers! Your choice whether to call that unfair or a victory :)

lordgrenville 4y ago
> Found this link to the paper Hurts my eyes. SciHub URL + DOI (10.1177/0022243719867935) works for me.
avereveard 4y ago
Alternative: people that like to experiment are the first jumping on new products, and people that like routines aren't - that would be enough to bias the experimenters into the harbinger group, and it would be useful to check if there's an overlap when measuring for household that were early adopter of successful products
- evrydayhustling 4y ago
  Good thought - people with "high variance" tastes might buy an unusual number of duds, but they might also be more likely to pick breakout products. An analysis for that would need to include degrees of product success, not just survival.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Got my “is this data mining” sceptical hat on.

fallingfrog 4y ago

I was hoping to see some red meat in the article in terms of who these harbinger households are, what kinds of products they are buying or politicians they support, so that I could either judge them for their poor taste or empathize with their misunderstood genius. Alas, the article seems to lack those kinds of details, except for the examples of Diet Crystal Pepsi and Colgate Kitchen Entrees. Both of those products sound baffling and horrible to me.

nominusllc 4y ago
Crystal pepsi was delicious. Clearly you have some parental neglect issues to work through, because most people know this.
- StrictDabbler 4y ago
  Crystal pepsi tasted like normal Pepsi but it didn't stain your teeth brown. We, as a society, drink intense dyes every day largely because of the legacy of prohibition... weirdly colored sodas were the social camouflage for "medicinal" liquor. Surely this brightly colored froth-tube can't be harmful! This rolled into the marketing illustrations of the mid-20th century. On a utilitarian level all sodas should be clear.
  - nominusllc 4y ago
    This comment resonates with me. I want to have a soda, but without all the dyes. Or any drink, or even foods for that matter like salmon that is dyed pink.
- fallingfrog 4y ago
  Hahaha! I see your point but.. having "Crystal Pepsi" just seems weird from a branding point of view, why not just call it Sprite? Like, what's the expectation of what that would taste like? It's like saying "7-UP root beer", it's just really not clear what flavor I should expect upon drinking it. I have the same issues with other postmodern mashup fast foods, like, I've seen taco pizza and pizza flavored tacos. Make up your mind, are you a pizza or a taco? Such an abomination is a challenge to all existing categories of being.

ravenstine 4y ago

This happens to me any time something is either mango or watermelon flavored.

patwolf 4y ago

A lot of the insight in this paper seems pretty obvious when given any thought. > Households that leave harbinger zip codes tend to go to other harbinger zip codes. Since they also claim that house prices in harbinger zip codes increase less than other areas, then this just sounds like people from poor areas moving to other poor areas. > The findings indicate that harbinger zip codes are less likely than other zip codes to donate to the candidates who receive the most donations in their three-digit zip code. There can be huge differences between two areas with the same three-digit zip codes. A rural or suburban area can easily have the same three-digits as a downtown urban area. It would make sense for a people in two starkly different areas to support different political candidates and for the candidate supported by the more populous urban area to win.

kloch 4y ago

I should contract myself out to shopping malls. - Any store I notice as I walk by might be gone in 2 years - Any store I walk into is likely to be gone in 1 year - Any store I actually buy something from has about 6 months left... (this only applies to small stores. The anchors can live on in zombie mode for decades)

notacoward 4y ago

I'm a bit like this with restaurants. I know it's a super-tough business with high turnover already, but places I like have seemed especially prone to failure. Three in one location in my home town. At least three in Seattle (which residents will be pleased to know I no longer visit). Almost eerie. When it comes to consumer products, I've just come to accept that my favorite beers or sodas or cheeses or candies will only be available for a short while, but I don't think that's anything to do with the harbinger phenomenon. I'm just a bit more willing than most to step away from my already-favorite brands and try something new, which means trying lots of things that have an inherently higher chance of not gaining traction in the market.

LorenPechtel 4y ago

My wife is a harbinger of doom for restaurants. If she really likes a place that guarantees it will either close or change so she no longer favors it. I think it's that she's looking at value as well as the food, she's very good at finding places that aren't charging enough for good food.

ggm 4y ago

This.Happens.To.Me.All.The.Time. All.The.Time. that Amazing Neutrogena conditioner, which was really good and lasted a year? Gone: if it lasts a year, its too good. that original low-sugar chex? gone. we invented three new flavours. that jam? gone. butter? gone. that cut of meat? gone. those pens? I mean pentel pens. How can pentel can an entire line of really good, fine writer ballpens? Gone. Sorry dude, it was you and your partner, thats IT. we checked inventory, we were shipping the last box to your category killer store two years before we canned it. It was you and some wierd hobo in Chiba were the last ones buying. Wilkinson Sword made 30cl shaving foam cans, mostly supplied to the airline business for Business class passengers. Gone. That was the good stuff. I have to scrabble around for a Nivea gel in the same form factor, its hard to find. My partner and I feel like the harbinger of doom for products a lot, we have dreamed of renting ourselves out to the highest bidder, to go and buy competitor product. We even called ourselves this before I read the term. We joked about being the kiss of death in shops, and then it became un-funny to the point we're scared to tell shopkeepers how much we like products sometimes. (for the ones we want, we'd buy a LOT. That neutrogena shampoo is $40 a bottle now in the ebay hoarder bins. Neutrogena triple moisture daily deep conditioner. It used to be like $7. I have two bottles coming via a reseller, thats another year before we have to find a different conditioner.) Grape Nuts. They're next. Trust me, Post is going to be reading the interwebs and my supplies of Grape Nuts will dry up. Wierdly, we are high income, we are not buying dead real estate and out voting useless candidates (Green, Labor, our candidates do very well). So I think the article has over-compensated somehow. Maybe we're up market Harbingers of Doom. Bespoke. Artisanal.

hinkley 4y ago
Shoes are this way for a lot of people, in that some of us can keep a pair of shoes long enough that the next fashion cycle has happened and you can't find anything like that again. I got to the point where if I really liked a pair of shoes, I'd buy a second pair and throw them in the closet for nine months, and cross my fingers that I like the shoes in the second refresh more than I liked the ones in the first one. And lets talk about ya'll motherfuckers wearing jeans that make your eyes pop out. Stores I used to shop at, some of them don't even have regular jeans anymore. I was the first person off the tight jeans bandwagon the last time that went around, and I'm not jumping on this one, even if that means I have to shop at thrift stores until you all wake up on your own, or until your doctor tells you to stop wearing those if you want kids.

wadefletch 4y ago

[flagged]

anigbrowl 4y ago

I read the whole paper and the supplementary information, but nowhere could I find the list of zipcodes.

benj111 4y ago

Considering the number of times they used the word Harbinger, you would have thought they'd learn to spell it correctly, or at least consistently.

oh_sigh 4y ago
Where is it spelled incorrectly or inconsistently? I hate how much they used it in the article (20 times), already a kind of a funny word set up for semantic satiation - but I didn't notice those errors.
- matthewsmith2 4y ago
  There are multiple uses of Habringer as the spelling
  - jhugo 4y ago
    All of the mistakes are in this paragraph: > The researchers also claim that harbinger households voluntarily cluster: that when a harbinger household moves, it is likely that it will move to another habringer ZIP code (and nonhabringers move to nonhabringer households). Moreover, harbingers don't appear to learn their preferences from one another — a nonhabringer household that locates in a harbinger ZIP code doesn't alter its purchasing and political contributions to "loser" products and candidates.
    - standardly 4y ago
      Satiate me semantically please sir
  - mistersquid 4y ago
    > There are multiple uses of Habringer as the spelling A “Habringer” is someone who brings the “Ha”.
    - elSidCampeador 4y ago

carlmr 4y ago

>They tend to make above-average use of coupons, and the coupons they use have above-average values. Isn't this kind of expected? Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. The higher the coupon value, the more desperate the company to get rid of this stock. So if these households like to coupon a lot, that means they accept less than ideal market fit for a price reduction.

Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Companies will give out coupons for products that don't sell so well. In my experience working retail, this just isn't the case, in general - unless it has changed in the last decade. Coupons have a couple of purposes: Loyalty and foot traffic, much like sales, and often on things they make a decent profit on. You wind up seeing Tide laundry soap, Gillette razor blades, and so on. CVS gives coupons on CVS brand items to promote their store brand... which keeps folks coming back to buy stuff they make a decent profit on. Coupons are very likely to happen on new products, too, as a way to entice folks to buy them. It also costs money to put out coupons, either physical or digital, in no small part because you have many retailers that need reimbursed and coupon fraud is definitely an issue as well. Simply put: Coupons are an advertising device. Often, products that aren't selling well are either taken back by the manufacturer (to be sold at places that sell discontinued stuff) or marked down by the retailer with absolutely no fanfare (like a coupon). Folks that coupon a lot (or extrememly) are often getting new or established products at a good price instead of things they won't find in 3 months.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Coupons also allow price segmentation - they can sell that Tide soap for $20 to those who will pay it (and not bother with the coupon) and then offer almost perpetual coupons to those who know (and will bother), selling it for two prices simultaneously. Things that aren't selling get discounted or clearanced, which can be fun when they overlap - you get the original coupons designed to promote the product, and the product flopped, so it's on discount, but the system still allows the coupon to apply to it - sometimes to nearly zero or even negative (most registers don't allow negative amounts anymore).