With all the hype before product launch, why were the sales of the Segway scooter so disappointing?  According to research by Duke alumnus David Alexander of the University of St. Thomas, John Lynch of Duke University, and Qing Wang of Warwick University, the highly-touted, innovative product may have been just too new and unfamiliar.

While novelty may create advertising buzz, when it comes time to part with their money, consumers prefer the familiar over the really new—especially when using the new product requires a behavior change.

The research, reported in “As Time Goes By: Warm Intentions and Cold Feet for Really New versus Incrementally New Products,” was funded by the Marketing Science Institute (MSI).  It was recently awarded the Robert D. Buzzell MSI Best Paper Award, chosen by MSI trustees for its lasting value to marketing executives.
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The Fuqua School of Business has been ranked as the No. 2 business school worldwide for research productivity.

The annual study, released by the UT Dallas School of Management, ranked The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University No. 2, ahead of the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, which occupied that position last year.

Top-Ranked Schools
1. University of Pennsylvania
2. Duke University
3. New York University
4. University of Chicago
5. University of Michigan

These rankings identify the top 100 business schools in North America and worldwide on the basis of faculty research productivity in leading academic journals over a five-year period. The school has tracked the publications of business school faculty members since 1990 in 24 leading peer-reviewed academic journals. The current rankings are based on the number of articles published in those journals from 2004 to 2008.

Dan Ariely’s research on “the IKEA effect” is featured in Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Business Ideas for 2009. Dan and his collaborators argue that customers tend to overvalue products like IKEA furniture because they have invested personal time and energy in their creation and assembly.  Managers are also not immune to the IKEA effect, Dan argues, because their judgment of projects’ value is likely to be clouded by previous investments of time and energy in those projects, making it more difficult for managers to pull the plug when things don’t work out.

The publication of Predictably Irrational, the best-selling book authored by our own Professor Dan Ariely, was certainly a highlight of 2008 for many of us at Fuqua. And we aren’t the only ones impressed with Dan’s work; Amazon customers chose Predictably Irrational as the best business and investing book of 2008, and the New York Times selected it as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2008.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to read the Predictably Irrational or hear Dan speak about his research, you may want to take a look at a chapter-by-chapter series of videos we’ve produced in which Dan explains the main concepts of the book (and stay tuned for more, there are a few chapters still in production).

Congratulations to Fuqua’s faculty, ranked #1 in intellectual capital in the latest BusinessWeek rankings.

This is well-deserved recognition for a fine group of scholars and teachers.