Our hotel gave its guests a choice of one of five gifts. One became unavailable. Two new possibilities were tested for guest preference. But they were erroneously tested against each other. That procedure might pick a gift that was almost always 2nd choice among the five while the other prospective gift might be usually fifth but sometimes first. There are many analogies including elections.
No further explanation needed. All comments welcome.
There are numerous examples of marketing failures.
Some companies don’t really understand their target audience- like when Playboy decided to stop showing nudity in 2016 so people could read the articles.
Or the low-fat Wow potato chips that were fine in the recommended serving size, but were a disaster when eating the portions that people who eat potato chips typically consume at a sitting.
Some companies don’t understand their image is reflected in one type of product and try to branch out to different product lines – like when Colgate, associated with oral hygiene products decided to start selling frozen foods. After the movie Avatar, several TV manufacturers thought that there was a market for 3D TV, but they didn’t do their market research and lost a lot of money.