Demand for something rises simply because others are adopting it, independent of its merits.
Distinct from the Veblen effect: here popularity is the signal, there price is. Leibenstein named both in 1950 along with the snob effect, its inverse.
In practice
- A restaurant fills because it is full, and the queue outside is doing more work than the kitchen.
- A slide template spreads through a company not because anyone judged it good but because the last three decks used it.
- Standing
- Distinguished from the Veblen effect, where price rather than popularity is the signal.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- The measured patterns of social life