Cognitive Lock-in : Why your neighbor loves their mac

The Journal of Consumer Research recently released a report on the topic of "cognitive lock-in". In business school, this is more commonly referred to as "switching costs".

The report basically goes out to prove that when someone is familiar with something, they will generally remain liking that thing even if a "better" alternative is available, due to a psychological attachment to the familiar.

Hence, when Facebook announces a new display format for their website, hundreds of thousands of its users complain, even if the new format is in fact better than their old one. Similarly, there is the mac/windows/linux argument, which seems to be raging strong as ever, even though the three systems are as similar to each other as they have ever been.

The "cognitive lock-in" theory introduces a difficult paradox when entering established markets: if users are more likely to think the products they are familiar with are higher quality, how do you introduce a higher quality product?

In other words, the iPod circle scroll wheel is not the only/best way to navigate songs on an MP3 player. How does one convince the current iPod owner of this, if they are psychologically primed to dislike anything different?

(found via Arstechnica)