MKT 407 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Miracle Whip, French Wine
Document Summary
An explanation for executives" love affair with vague strategy statements relates to phenomenon called curse of knowledge. 1990 stanford grad student illustrated curse of knowledge by studying tappers and listeners. Each tapper was told to pick a well known song and tap out rhythm on table, listener had to guess the song. 120 songs were tapped out- listeners guessed only 3 of the songs correctly; success ratio of 2. 5% Before listener guessed tappers were asked to predict probability of song being guessed correctly. This is because when tapper taps, it"s impossible to avoid hearing the tune playing in their head. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine not knowing it- our knowledge has cursed us. Have difficulty sharing with others because we can"t readily recreate their state of mind. Leaders thwart curse of knowledge by translating their strategies into concrete language. Trader joe"s beats curse of knowledge and pours meaning into its strategy by using concrete language.
