Faculty Contributors:  Eric T. Bradlow, Xavier Dreze, Peter S. Fader, John Wesley Hutchinson, Robert Meyer, David J. Reibstein

By playing the role of a consumer, students learn information acceleration techniques used to market new products

About FutureView

How do you market a product that’s entirely new — a product that’s unlike anything currently on the market? How do you determine who might buy it, what conditions are necessary for its success, or what features are most important?

Wharton’s FutureView presents a rich, web-based multimedia environment that demonstrates how “information acceleration” can help to develop quantitative marketing data for new categories of products.

FutureView is a faculty-configurable learning environment that lets students learn about information acceleration by letting them experience information acceleration techniques firsthand

In Part I of FutureView, the consumer views a sequence of news items, articles, and video segments that move him forward into the world in which autodrive technology is a reality.

FutureView’s opening video sets the stage by defining the problem: even though we build more roadways, they remain crowded and congested.

The consumer begins by viewing a series of future articles and publications showing the development of autodrive technology.

Articles and news clips unfold the story of the development of the automated highway system.

Different media accounts cover the story..

…from various perspectives.

In Part II the consumer is presented with an array of options to browse for additional product information — print ads, reviews and articles, user testimonials, web pages, and television commercials.

For each category in Part II, a number of options are available. The screen shown here displays a list of web sites available for browsing detailed product information.

Individual web sites let the consumer browse for additional product information.

Video segments provide “word of mouth” from current product users.

Print advertisements emphasize different product features.

Digital video allows the consumer to watch simulated television spots for autodrive products.

Background articles, product reviews, and documentary video segments provide additional options for learning about autodrive products.

FutureView’s configuration options allow the faculty member to manipulate the future experience in Part I and the product information options in Part II to create different “scenarios” that are automatically assigned to each user.

Part III of FutureView asks the consumer a brief series of questions about product features and consumer information.

The entire FutureView experience is configurable, allowing the faculty member to create a series of different “scenarios” randomly distributed to FutureView users:

The configuration screen shown creates a FutureView experience with only positive word-of-mouth accounts:

…which presents a selected set of testimonials to the consumer:

FutureView’s session tracking provides accurate and detailed click-stream data for each user session.

Consumer behavior in FutureView is tracked and available for analysis and export.

Unlike tracking based on web logs, FutureView stores a complete and accurate click-stream for each session.

Individual session analysis is available within FutureView. Here the session is sorted by time spent on each item.

In this example the time spent on each item is displayed numerically rather than graphically as in the examples above.

FutureView data can be exported for analysis in Excel or other external software packages.