It Seems Like Only Yesterday: The Nature and Consequences of Telescoping Errors in Marketing Research

Abstract

When asked to place the time of a past event, people have a systematic tendency to recall that recent events occurred farther back in time (backward telescoping) and distant events occurred more recently (forward telescoping) than is actually the case. In this article, I provide a conceptual analysis and an empirical examination of the extent of telescoping errors in marketing research and the implications of these errors. The results show that (a) on average, consumers underestimate the time since purchasing a durable good; (b) the magnitude of forward telescoping errors increases and the propensity to make backward telescoping errors decreases with the time since purchase; (c) telescoping errors affect future purchase intentions; and (d) telescoping biases vary across different demographic segments. A propositional inventory linking telescoping errors to product, respondent, and situational factors is presented for future research.

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