Choice overload is part of the reason why users choose familiar options, which is why it can be a powerful force in helping your brand stand out in a sea of similar options.
2. It adjusts the way we perceive experiences
Familiarity bias has been shown to be not only a resource optimization process, but also an actual tool that modulates attention, memory, brand preference, donation behavior, and even the perceived taste of foods.
Let’s look at an example that is familiar to me. As an Italian, my childhood afternoon snack was Nutella on bread. So every time I saw other chocolate spreads, I didn’t even think of it. Myself; however, my Spanish friend Isabel grew up on Nocilla and swears by Nocilla, saying that Nutella tastes bad in comparison.
But why does this happen? As research with Wageningen University in the Netherlands has shown, familiarity modulates the way we experience something perceptually, leading to emotionally biased preferences. It can even lead to action. The research group tested soy sauce brand awareness and taste preference and concluded that people reported liking the sauce more if it was known and familiar. This taste preference also applies if the participant: thought They recognized a familiar brand, but they were wrong. Correctly identifying one’s familiar brand, whether correct or incorrect, significantly increased liking scores.
Although theories of decision making and emotion are more complex and still under research, the power of familiarity on brand perception and liking has been demonstrated by several other studies over the past few decades (Monroe, 1976 ; Park & Lessig, 1981; Maria Sääksjärvi, Saeed Samiee, 2007; Ma, Wang & Da, 2021, etc.). For example, the iconic one by McClure et al. investigated behavioral preferences exhibited toward well-known brands by providing participants with a blind taste test of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. When participants did not know the brand of drink they were trying, preference for one or the other was evenly split within the group. However, if a label is attached to a drink, ‘Brand knowledge of a drink had a dramatic effect on expressed behavioral preferences and measured brain responses. ” In other words, both brand knowledge and culture influence biased emotion-based preferences.
3. It gives you a sense of security.
As we’ve seen, the familiarity bias allows us to filter out choices and free up cognitive resources for other important tasks. But what makes it so powerful in behavioral and financial decisions is something deeper: the perception of safety it can convey.
While this is undoubtedly a resource-efficient mechanism, familiarity also influences our feelings toward a brand, especially our trust in it. And it is this awareness of safety that can turn casual visitors into trusted customers.
The familiarity heuristic is widely known in behavioral economics, where investors choose local or national companies because they believe they carry less risk. The same thing seems to happen with online businesses. A closer look at the Google Search Console (GSC) queries of some global companies shows that branded location-based keywords drive the most searches and, in some cases, the lowest click-through rate (CTR). You can see that it is You may lose potential customers who are evaluating your offer.