Are Virtual Markets Efficient Predictors of New Product Success? The Case of the Hollywood Stock Exchange *

Defining effective methods for determining consumer preferences for products prior to their launch has been a mainstay of marketing and management literature for decades. Virtual Stock Markets (VSMs) is an emerging method in new product forecasting that has been shown to produce reliable new product sales estimates by combining individual preferences via market‐based aggregation mechanisms. Due to the emerging popularity of VSMs among practitioners, this cross‐disciplinary study (combining insights from finance, marketing, and new product development fields) uses the example of the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) and examines its predictive validity and potential systematic biases in its predictions to help think about the general applicability of these forecasting methods to other product areas, or how forecasts in other product areas may need to be modified to be more precise. This study finds evidence of overestimating the sales potential associated with products on the low end of the revenue expectation spectrum, which could be linked to the fact that in artificial exchanges, where no money changes hands, people tend to gamble hoping to make excessive returns. However, this explanation is weakened by the introduction of additional variables linked to the negative influence of information search costs (harder to utilize information is not fully reflected in the stock prices) and over‐utilization of highly visible/conspicuous information. Practical implications for managers considering using VSMs for new product forecasting in creative gestalt‐like settings are discussed.