Product Loyalty:Familiarity mistaken for superiority

Filed in archive Marketing on June 6, 2007

A new study shows that people mistake familiarity for superiority when it comes to analyzing and adopting new products and services. Hence, the great difficulty to introduce a new service in competition to Google, or a new operating system in competition with windows.

People being familiar with Google or Windows see these products being superior rather than just a familiarity. The old Windows vs Mac argument comes in here -- people more familiar with Windows will see Windows as superior and those familiar with Mac are dogged in their claims of superiority for that product.

Hence, the more like Windows an operating system becomes, such as Ubuntu, the more likely people are going to switch as Windows would seem to be less superior -- if Ubuntu can do what Windows does the less superior Windows becomes in people's minds. Hmmm . . . food for thought!