MIT Sloan Management Review

Decision Making, Market Forcasting, Marketing

What People Want (and How to Predict It)

By Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris

January 9, 2009

Companies now have unprecedented access to data and sophisticated technology that can inform decisions as never before. How successful are they at helping forecast what customers want to watch, listen to and buy?

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The Year 2007 was a terrible year for many big movie stars. One major exception was Will Smith, whose film “I Am Legend” set a box-office record for a movie opening in December, taking in $77 million. In 2008, Smith’s star vehicle “Hancock” grossed more than $625 million worldwide despite poor critical reviews. Smith’s success was not all that surprising, however: With the exception of the Harry Potter movies, those in which Smith star have higher opening weekends and average box-office receipts than movies with any other male lead.1

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Does Smith know something that Jim Carrey and others do not? Quite possibly: When Smith went to Hollywood to start his film career, he and his business manager studied a list of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time. “We looked at them and said, OK, what are the patterns?” Smith recalls. “We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.”2

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