I just read in the Harvard Business Review daily stat that when simultaneously using multiple items, consumers prefer products of the same brand, a phenomenon that overwhelms their preexisting brand preferences.
Here’s what they report:
Research participants who were consuming a nonfavored brand (of chips, say) chose the same brand of a complementary product (salsa, for example) over a favored brand more than 60% of the time, on average, across four product categories, say doctoral student Ryan Rahinel and Joseph P. Redden of the University of Minnesota. People seem to believe that products under the same brand umbrella are somehow designed to go well together, the researchers say.
Source: Brands as Product Coordinators: Matching Brands Make Joint Consumption Experiences More Enjoyable
Coaching pointer: How can you use this customer preference in your sales strategy?