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Wouldn't market questionnaire testing of just 100 people saved them this expensive juggling act?

Anyway, I fear streaming price increases next year for sure as all the media outlets start to gouge netflix and they pass it on.

Best thing netflix can do is make sure consumers know which distributors are purposely giving them horrible contracts and that it's not netflix's fault.



>Wouldn't market questionnaire testing of just 100 people saved them this expensive juggling act?

Probably would've killed the ipad, too.


The iPad was not revolutionary... it is a giant iPhone with no phone. I would have said I wanted one beforehand, and believe probably 80% of the people who have bought one would have thought it looked awesome. So no, I disagree.


Today's numbers would seemingly contradict your statement about the iPad being revolutionary; http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/10/...


No, if I had said the iPad was not successful, perhaps the article would contradict that.


I dunno. Unlike the Qwikster split, the iPad is pretty popular with customers.


I wonder about the potential blowback of hounding problem distributors publicly, though.

It's possible it could work a few times; get consumers to go after them. But I think some would have negative reactions. Kids gloves may well be the best bet.


One certainly is led to question just how out of touch the decision makers must be when a company makes a move like this and retracts it so soon.


100 customers is not remotely close to a large enough sample size to glean anything worth the hassle to do the test. 100,000 would be better, but then you're spending a huge amount of money for results that might add nothing to your research. The whole "faster horse" theory applies here.


I don't see how "faster horse" theory applies to this experiment. The whole point of the faster horse theory is to look beyond your customer's assumptions to give them what they really want. Netflix wasn't looking to give their customers what they wanted, they were looking to inconvenience customers based upon internal logistics.

In many ways they were violating the faster horse theory: asking us if we wanted better streaming service or better dvd service. They were focused on technical details (do you want a horse or car) rather than the bigger picture (better travel - I don't care if it's by car or horse or teleportation).


http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/best-estimates-guide-sampl...

100,000 is overkill. 1,000 is reasonably sufficient.




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