John Gourville, professor of marketing at Harvard, says: Many innovations fail coz consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new!
Put differently, user habits are a competitive advantage for the brands that have habituated them. Any new brand that attempts to change the customer routine will find it difficult to do so. Reason why, Gourville says brands that warrant a high degree of behaviour change generally fail if their benefits are not clear and substantial.
For instance, once you start reading a certain newspaper, you find it difficult to change the brand. The same is the case with your bank. Most often, the first bank you open your account in happens to be your last as well.
John Gourville claims that for new brand to stand any chance of converting the customer, it just can’t better than the old one but ten times superior, if not more. Apple moved us from Nokia coz it was not just better. It was superior!
Look at the keyboard of the device you are holding. What you have there is the QWERTY keyboard. Wonder what it is? Just look at how the letters Q W E R T Y are arranged there. Thus, the name!
This keyboard was first developed in the 1870s for the now-defunct typewriter. It was designed so the commonly used characters are spaced wide apart thus preventing typists from jamming the metal type bars of those early typewriters.
Better designed keyboards were invented during the 20th century. The one invented by August Dvorak placed the vowels in the centre row that increased the typing speed and accuracy. Yet, even the electronic typewriters that replaced the old-styled typewriters didn’t have them incorporated.
The QWERTY keyboards still remain the standard despite the invention of far better layouts. From typewriters to their modern-day cousins, computers. Truly an anachronism in this digital age!
Qwerty has survived and continues to flourish thanks to the high costs of changing user behaviour. One kind of humans, me included, learned typewriting and, hence, found it hard to change our typing pattern. The rest, instinctively learned to place their fingers in response to their thoughts with little or no conscious effort thanks to practice. Switching to an unfamiliar keyboard even if it is more efficient will force me and others to relearn how to type. And that is not going to happen.
Therefore, Qwerty lives on, no matter how quirky it is!