Prediction of Consumer Behavior by Experts and Novices

Are those who are familiar with scientific research on consumer behavior better able to make predictions about phenomena in this field? Predictions were made for 105 hypotheses from 20 empirical studies selected from the Journal of Consumer Research. A total of 1,736 predictions were obtained from 16 academics, 12 practitioners, and 43 high school students: The practitioners were correct on 58.2 percent of the hypotheses, the students on 56.6 percent, and the academics on 51.3 percent. No group performed better than chance.