Is your customer buying your prodcut or your popularity?

Our brain run on autopilot more often than we realise. One such behaviour is hearding, where we have the tendency to follow group or try to in a group. Imagine a few people suddenly started running. You don't know what's happening, but you might start running too, assuming they know something you don't?

Now, lets apply this into Cusomer behaviour, a D2C product goes viral and suddenly everyone wants to try it. A resturants has a queue outside it, we assume food must be good. A SaaS product gets #1 on product hunt and everyone wants to know what it does.

This i find really intriguing, becuase popularity can become a shortcut for credibility. (PS not shade to people who gets #1 on this platform a very big deal and hardwork) I'm just naturally curious on cusomer behaviour, read this paper recently in harvard business review about how fast consumer behaviour is changing in this decade.

Curious to hear what other makers think.