Popularity makes cool uncool

From WikiCover

Announced December 14, 2007, researchers have found that consumers may abandon products if they start being favored by the masses, or by members of certain social groups. As soon as chic goes mainstream, or geeks start sporting the clothes of jocks, items are dropped by the cool people.

In their research, Stanford PhD Jonah Berger (now at Wharton) and Stanford professor Chip Heath found that in product domains or categories that are used to communicate identity, consumers were more likely to try to separate themselves from the majority or members of specific social groups. The relevant products were in trendy domains such as music or hairstyles, as opposed to the more utilitarian categories such as backpacks or stereos.

In these volatile areas known as identity domains, participants avoided options once they learned such items were preferred by majorities. In one study, for example, consumers were asked for their favorites in areas such as cars, clothing brands, dish soaps, and bicycle lights. A couple of weeks later, they were given information suggesting that the items they had preferred were now also getting a strong nod from a high percentage of other students. When retested for their preferences, they changed their choices, but only in product categories that were identity relevant--such as cars, clothing, and music--and not in categories that weren't--such as dish soap and bicycle lights. Cool had suddenly become uncool, and when too many others liked an item it was no longer a good marker of identity.

In another study, a cool item became passe when it was perceived that an uncool group also favored it. Undergraduates were asked how much they liked a new digital music player. If they viewed the music player as simply functional, they rated it just as high when told that other social groups also used it. But when they were asked to write about ways that the products could communicate a sense of identity--thereby putting themselves in the mindset that the item was identity-relevant--it was a different story. If they found out that a group dissimilar to them--in this case, business executives--liked the product, the students being studied rated it more negatively.

The paper suggests that companies that deal in identity-relevant goods must constantly stay ahead of the cool-passe pendulum swing.