Status Quo Bias
Why people resist change and prefer keeping things as they are, and how to use status quo bias in your marketing.
In this issue
Hey 👋 The Crew here.
You can’t always do a lot. But you can always do just a little bit.
Like the guys saving flowers from landfills and redeploying them to nursing homes and hospitals.
Sometimes, a little is more than enough, right?
Reading time: 4 minutes, 29 seconds
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In 1985, Coca-Cola made a terrible mistake.
Well, not really terrible. But one particular business decision brought tens of thousands of protesters to the streets, created major backlash, and even threatened to ruin the brand forever.
Can you guess what Coca-Cola did? It changed the formula of its drink.
The “New Coke”—launched in response to Pepsi taking a chunk of the soft drink market share—passed the blind taste tests and had favorable metrics.
But it didn’t matter.
People had become used to Coca-Cola’s familiar, default taste. And the response forced the brand to bring the old version back.
Turns out… people really hate change.
Academic researchers often use the case of the new Coke todemonstrate Status Quo bias—the theory that people tend to leave things as they are, and are resistant to change.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? If you’re used to an automatic transmission car, it’s hard to switch to manual.
So if something is your “default,” it automatically gets the edge.
In countries where organ donation at death is the default, more than 90% of people donate their organs.
But in nations like the US—where people have to change the setup and explicitly opt in—fewer than 15% register. That’s a 75% difference.
Why did Google go to such great lengths—risking the biggest lawsuit in big tech history—to become the world’s default search engine?
Because the default helps you sell more. And you can leverage its power, too.
Three ways you can leverage Status Quo Bias
Create a strategic default
People expect default settings to be right. And they don’t want to change them.
Unless a setting really makes a user pull their hair out—which isn’t good in the first place—they are 95% likely to leave default options intact.
Obviously, you want to make default settings right, but you also want to maximize their value.
Amazon makes the “Subscribe & Save” option default for essential items, which increases the lifetime value of their customers.
What you can do: Think of ways to increase average order value or lifetime value of orders by changing the default option—bundles, subscriptions, combos, and similar.
Emphasize the continuity of your brand
Stability and familiarity: Those are the core pillars of Status Quo Bias.
If you can emphasize your brand’s long-standing presence and a reputation for maintaining customer loyalty and satisfaction, you can both attract new customers and keep the old ones.
This BIC ad does just that:
Two key takeaways:
- You don’t have to redesign a good product at all costs. Remember Coca-Cola?
- A product that maintains its consistency long term is more likely to keep winning.
If your brand has been on the market for several years, don’t shy away from highlighting that. Put “since 2002” above your logo or in your advertising copy.
You can also show testimonials where customers say they’ve been using your product or service for a longer time—alluding to your stability.
New customers will love it just as much.
Push more retention campaigns
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
As we said earlier, your customers don’t want to switch from something that works to something unknown.
It’s up to you to make them realize that changing things up isn’t really worth it.
That’s where retention campaigns come in. Email sequences, remarketing ads, consistent social media posting… all incline your customers to stick with you instead of going with a competitor.
What you can do: Emphasize the benefits of staying, share other success stories, provide loyalty discounts, or just stay top of mind, and you’ll solidify their commitment.
See how Duolingo does it:
The company sends retention emails and push notifications for a long time after you’re inactive.
Not only to get you back on the app—which is its primary goal—but also to never let you consider another language learning app once you feel like you’re ready to go back.
And it works.
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ICYMI, last time we looked at In-Group Favoritism.
The “Unchanged” Crew
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