First to market doesn’t mean that upcoming competition doesn’t have a chance. It means you’re the first to start developing an emotional attachment to an individual. The stronger this emotional attachment, the harder it is to sway consumer opinion to a competitive product.

Hood & Bloom conducted a study examining the emotional attachment children had to certain objects, both animate and inanimate. The lab was done on children aged 3 – 6 years old, because they have not yet come close to the cognitive stages involved with reasoning, as older individuals.  Their parents brought them in to the lab with an object which they exhibited an emotional attachment to, and had owned for at least 1/3 of their life. They were showed “copying machines” that could completely duplicate these objects.

As expected, children chose the object of their attachment over the duplicated one. This occurred, to not much surprise over the objects without any previous attachment.

This study confirms what would fit virtually everyone’s initial hypothesis. I thought it was interesting to post because it shows how we are built with a distinct set of rules within our biology, which dictate part of our behavior. Children appear to be naturally more attached to items, than most adults. Think back if you had a favorite stuffed animal, or blanket and how you wouldn’t go anywhere without it.

This is a survival mechanism. The children who did not stay attached – say to their parents, might have wandered off and were unable to survive on their own. These rules likely translate in to the world of premium branding. Do you want the Louis Vutton Bag? Or will you settle for the knock-off from the copying machine.