Why We Want to Be First to Own It
What the need for uniqueness, identity-laden product choices and a century of first names say about owning it early, and how long the lead lasts.
Answer to the question
Why do we want to be first to own it?
Because being first to own something shows a difference from other people before they catch up. Research ties the wish to differ to categories that carry identity meaning, and finds that tastes adopted quickly tend to fade sooner. Our view: the prize is the difference, not the object, so the wish is strongest early and weakest once an item is everywhere.
Key takeaways
- Will Storr's The Status Game describes a success game in which rank comes from visible achievement, and early ownership is one visible way to show it.
- In four studies, Jonah Berger and Chip Heath found that people diverged from majorities more in product categories with identity meaning than in purely functional ones.
- Using more than a hundred years of first-name data from France and the United States, Jonah Berger and Gaël Le Mens found that tastes adopted quickly tended to die out sooner.
- Expecting parents hesitated to choose names that had recently surged in popularity, which the authors tie to concern about symbolic value.
- Our view: the prize in being first is the difference, so the wish is strongest early and weakest once an item is everywhere.
Being first to own something is a claim that expires. While the item is new, an early owner shows a difference from everyone who has not caught up, and research on uniqueness and on cultural taste explains why that difference is worth wanting. The same research explains why the claim loses value as the item spreads.
Why does being first to own feel like status?
Will Storr's The Status Game argues that status is a basic human need and that people chase it by playing games with rules of their own. In what he calls the success game, rank comes from visible achievement. Early ownership suits that game: it asks for money or attention rather than a trophy, and it shows the moment the item appears.
On this view, a claim to be first to own needs onlookers. In an empty room it earns nothing; it needs people who can tell that the owner arrived early and who care that they did. That is why the audience matters as much as the item.
Need for uniqueness, the wish to differ from others, varies from one person to the next, and C. R. Snyder and Howard Fromkin published a scale to measure it in 1977. Scarcity work such as Why do we love limited editions? draws on the idea, with a cap on supply doing the persuading; being first to own runs on a different clock, since nobody caps the supply and the item is simply not yet common.
Early owners are also watched: contagion of a new product passed along network ties even after marketing effort was accounted for, in a study by Raghuram Iyengar, Christophe Van den Bulte and Thomas Valente. Its strength depended on how recipients saw a source's opinion leadership and on how much that source used the product. A visible early owner is therefore both a person making a claim about themselves and a possible source of influence on everyone nearby.
Three questions separate a real wish to be first to own from a habit of following launches:
- Does the item say something about who the owner is, or does it only do a job?
- Would the wish survive if everyone owned it by next month?
- Is there an audience who will notice that the owner arrived early?
Where do people choose to differ?
Music and hairstyles pull people away from the majority; backpacks and stereos do not. People were more likely to diverge from majorities, or from members of other social groups, in product categories that carry symbolic identity meaning than in purely functional ones, in four studies by Jonah Berger and Chip Heath. In the identity-laden categories, participants avoided options favoured by majorities and dropped preferences they shared with them. A product's link to a social group also counted for more when the choice was framed as relevant to identity.
Framing carried weight too. A first to own claim therefore depends on setting: the same item can feel like a statement among people who watch for it and like an ordinary purchase among people who do not.
The authors conclude that people partly diverge to avoid communicating traits they do not want to be associated with. That is a narrower motive than a plain love of novelty. It is about what a choice says, and it explains why the same person can wait for the second version of a router and queue for the first release of a jacket.
For early ownership the finding suggests a prediction that the studies did not test: the wish to be first to own should be strongest where the item speaks about identity and weakest where it is a tool. Collectors work the same ground from another side, building sets that say something about their owner, as Why do people collect things? sets out. What the collector adds is time spent; what the early owner adds is timing.
What happens once everyone follows?
Across more than a hundred years of first-name data from France and the United States, tastes that were adopted quickly tended to die out sooner, as Jonah Berger and Gaël Le Mens traced. At the level of the individual, expecting parents hesitated to choose names that had recently surged in popularity. The authors attribute this to concern about symbolic value: people view fads negatively and avoid rapidly rising, identity-relevant options because they expect them to be short-lived. Further analyses suggested that quickly adopted cultural products also reach lower cumulative adoption overall, which offers an alternative to explanations based on saturation.
A name is not a product bought early, yet the logic carries over. The speed of a spread is itself a signal, and a steep climb can turn an early owner's difference into a marker of a fad. Being first to own is therefore worth most before an item is seen spreading, and the early owner holds a position in time, not a possession. The pull described in Why do we want what other people have points toward the crowd. The wish to be first points ahead of it, and the name data show how brief the gap between the two can be.
A release that adds owners slowly keeps the early position visible for longer, and one that adds them all at once ends it sooner. That is an inference from the name data, which cover cultural tastes and not launches.
The practical reading is a modest one. An item chosen for the sake of being first carries a value that starts to fall as soon as it is common. The owner who wants to be first to own gets the most from it in the early weeks, while the difference is still visible.
Common questions
Why do we want to be first to own it?
Being first to own something shows a difference from other people before they catch up. Research links the wish to differ to categories that carry identity meaning, and Storr's account of the success game explains why visible early achievement carries status.
Is wanting to be first the same as wanting something rare?
They are related but run on different clocks. A limited edition is rare because supply is capped. Something owned early is not rare for long, because the crowd arrives, and the value of the early position falls as it does.
Does being first keep its value?
In the first-name data, tastes adopted quickly tended to die out sooner, and parents hesitated over names that had recently surged. The research suggests the value of early ownership is greatest before an item is seen spreading, which is why the same early owner can feel ahead in the first weeks and ordinary once the crowd arrives. The name data come from cultural tastes and not from product launches, so they point to a direction and not to a schedule.
Sources
Storr, W. The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It. Seed book; vault hub Books/The Status Game.
Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1977). “Abnormality as a positive characteristic: The development and validation of a scale measuring need for uniqueness.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86(5), 518-527. doi:10.1037/0021-843x.86.5.518 https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.86.5.518
Berger, J., & Heath, C. (2007). “Where consumers diverge from others: Identity signaling and product domains.” Journal of Consumer Research, 34(2), 121-134. doi:10.1086/519142 https://doi.org/10.1086/519142
Berger, J., & Le Mens, G. (2009). “How adoption speed affects the abandonment of cultural tastes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(20), 8146-8150. doi:10.1073/pnas.0812647106 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0812647106
Iyengar, R., Van den Bulte, C., & Valente, T. W. (2011). “Opinion leadership and social contagion in new product diffusion.” Marketing Science, 30(2), 195-212. doi:10.1287/mksc.1100.0566 https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1100.0566