Comments on: The Harry Potter Effect

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:34:18 +0000

I pre-ordered from Amazon and UPS delivered it late Saturday morning. I finished it last night about 30 minutes before the Braves game. I guess the West Coast trip helped give me time to read.

By: JC

JC — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:12:48 +0000

Torchy,

Just having a bit of fun here. Plus, for a true Potter fan, TDH could not be put off. I basically refused to watch the news for a week for fear of accidentally reading spoilers.

Doug,

So you’re saying there were a few more beers and spicy turkey melts consumed on Saturday?

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:16:23 +0000

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I’d guess that lots of guys were encouraged to take a guys’ day/night out last Saturday. That often includes a ballgame.

By: Torchy

Torchy — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 21:22:48 +0000

You might also want to consider the sunk cost effect on baseball game attendance. In general I’d think that the cost of a ticket is about the cost of the new Harry Potter book. However, in many cases the purchase of the book is POS where as the baseball tickets are bought in advance. Therefore, the swing of choice would be toward the time dependent action (act now, the game is only played once). Further reasoning would point out that the book is not actually time dependent in the long run. While it is only released at one point in time, the book is a physical object that can produce benefit well after Saturday while the ticket can not.

If you want to look at a similar situation, I’d advise comparing apples to apples. Perhaps a blockbuster movie would be better. In that instance the product is time dependent and must be consumed at that specific moment. Just a thought.

By: Isabel

Isabel — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:46:08 +0000

I’m a Phillies fan. I also enjoy the Harry Potter books. The Phillies played the Padres in San Diego on Friday night; the game started at 10:05 ET, and as you know the book came out at midnight ET.

My evening went as follows:
10:05: turn on Phillies on radio. (I have various reasons for disliking my cable company enough to not spring for the package that would allow me to get weekday Phillies games on TV.)
11:25 or so (fourth inning?): like you, decide that I really want the Harry Potter book tonight (I had been planning to buy it Saturday during the day), and therefore start walking to the bookstore, which is a twenty-minute walk away.
11:45: get to bookstore. Wait in line for a long time. Frequently send text messages to GOOGL to get updates on the score of the game. (If I had a portable radio of some sort I might have brought it, but I don’t.)
12:50: get book.
1:10: get home. If I remember correctly, the ninth inning had just started; the score was 7-3 in the Phils’ favor, but with their bullpen I can’t just turn the game off and be assured that they’ll win. So I listened to the ninth inning and only then did I pick up the book.

So in the end I listened to about half the game on the radio, instead of the whole game as I probably would have without the book being released.

(Also, the people who are most likely to not go to a baseball game because of the book are also the ones who are most likely to have bought the book at midnight… and if they’re fast readers, they would have finished it before a Saturday night game. I did.)