Can Intense Preferences Shape Markets? Preference Concentration and Product Survival

This paper studies how the distribution of preference intensity affects product survival. Consumers may have the same average valuation of a product attribute, yet differ sharply in how concentrated that valuation is across the population. I show that this distinction matters for market selection. In a differentiated-product economy with fixed operating costs, a product survives only if it attracts enough revenue to cover its fixed cost. When the revenue contribution of consumers is convex in preference intensity, concentrating a fixed aggregate valuation among fewer high-intensity consumers raises the revenue of high-attribute products. Thus, small groups of strongly attached consumers can sustain varieties that would fail under a more diffuse distribution of moderate preferences. In a ranked-attribute benchmark, this condition has a simple interpretation: the product benefits from concentration when it is sufficiently distant from the share-weighted center of the active product range. The paper also separates private survival from welfare and aggregate impact. Applications to green products and privacy-oriented digital services show that cleaner or more privacy-protective varieties improve aggregate outcomes only when they sufficiently displace dirtier or more data-intensive alternatives.