When you’re walking through the local supermarket or perusing Amazon for a box of delicious cookies, you have probably asked yourself how your buying decisions is being made and somewhere between adding that box of Chips Ahoy to your online shopping cart and check out, you may have considered how unlikely it is that you really gave this critical snack decision the due diligence that it deserved. As usual, pop science has come to help us understand why.

Let me introduce you to the concept of cognitive lock-in.

The Psychology of Stagnation

When you think MP3 player, what pops into your mind? (iPod)

When you think of an operating system — how about now? (Windows or OSX; Linux users I love you, but not now).

Consumer Electronics? (Sony)

Video Games? (Nintendo)

The list could go on and on. What we all suffer from when we directly associate very specific, very popular brands with the concepts that they represent is called cognitive lock-in.

A study put out by the Journal of Consumer Research puts it like this,

…the costs associated with thinking about and using a particular product decrease as a function of the amount of experience a consumer has with it. Thus, repeated consumption or use of an incumbent product results in a (cognitive) switching cost that increases the probability that a consumer will continue to choose the incumbent over competing alternatives.

Huh?

The crux of the argument is as follows:

• Consumers have very few real means of determining a products superiority.
• As the familiarity with the product increases, the assumed short-comings of that product decrease in the consumers mind.
• Sales of products put out by familiar brands actually increase as consumers spend less time on that brand’s website.
• This is because the process of purchasing that brand becomes almost automatic.

To make things even more clear, we buy what we know and we have no idea why we do it.

Rats In A Maze

The researchers on this project conducted an experiment. They created two different website navigation interfaces. The first involved using radio buttons, the second involved pull down menus. Two groups were subjected to each of these layouts.

When the groups were then made to switch, and then asked which they preferred 81% of them said that the interface that they were initially assigned was the one that they preferred.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Next time you’re wondering why you prefer Flickr over Photobucket, or how in the world you could possibly still be using MySpace or even why you feel compelled to go through the hassle of signing up for an RSS feed — now you have a better idea, it’s all in your mind.

If you enjoyed that why not find a job or read our guide to working in the 21st century. You can also join our Kiva team or hire me for your project.