Scroll through the top 22 product categories on Amazon, and odds are some 60% of the brands for sale will be ones you’ve never heard of before.

That poses a challenge for marketers looking for their brands to be chosen among the many options, including familiar ones. UConn marketing professor Danielle Brick wondered how novel brands could make inroads in a very crowded marketplace.

Her research is forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, a premiere peer-reviewed journal in the field of marketing, with co-author professor Jessica Gamlin, of the University of Oregon. In their work, Brick and Gamlin uncovered a new understanding of what drives consumers to select novel brands, and provided some unexpected insights for marketing strategy. The key to attracting new consumers is to conflict with their goals.

Offering Candy Bars at the Gym

Globalization and technological advancements have created a rapid increase in the number of new brands in the marketplace, the researchers say. To explore how consumers make these decisions, the researchers embarked on six-studies to verify their hypothesis.

“New brands are appearing all the time,’’ Brick says. “There’s a lot of ‘noise’ in the marketplace. We wanted to understand what motivates consumers to try a new brand,’’ she says. Most previous consumer research addressed the choice between familiar and generic brands; this is a rare dive into novel brand choice.

They tested everything from cookies to soda to garbage bags and came up with the conclusion that consumers use a combination of their perceptions of the product and the ambiguity of the new brand to justify their choices.

For instance, they offered a choice of candy bars to students who were either at the gym or entering a dining hall, in exchange for completing a brief survey. The fitness buffs were offered a familiar brand, a Milky Way bar, or a novel brand, a Lion Bar.

“We found more people were likely to try the unfamiliar product at the gym than in the cafeteria,’’ Brick says. “When the goal, say, to make healthy choices, conflicts with the product options, consumers are more likely to choose the novel brand.’’

But when seeking a sweet indulgence, they were more likely to stick with the tried-and-true.

She and Gamlin conducted a similar experiment in a behavioral lab. They offered participants a choice of chocolate chip cookies after asking them about the importance of certain goals. The researchers offered a familiar brand, Chips Ahoy, and a novel brand, Partake, then a newcomer to the food market.

“We removed the nutritional information,’’ Brick says. “We asked people to write down two reasons why it was important to have a health goal or an indulgent goal. Those who were asked to describe health goals were more likely to select the new, or unfamiliar, brand of cookies.’’

In another study, Brick and Gamlin surveyed participants about their views on sustainability and their need to dispose of unwanted items. They presented two choices of trash bags, offering them the familiar, Glad, and a novel brand, Reli. The participants who selected the novel brand viewed it as less harmful to the environment.

The crux of the decision making seems to revolve around active goals and choice options within a given context, Brick says. If participants view the available options as conflicting with their active goal, they are more inclined to try something new.

Novel brands are ambiguous and open to interpretation with respect to their helpfulness or harmfulness, Brick says. Consumers tend to make more positive attributes when information is vague. Their “choice justification’’ strategies are employed in an effort to resolve negative feelings, Brick says.

Context Matters

“For marketers, these findings underscore the importance of context when positioning novel brands,’’ Brick says. “By understanding the nuanced ways in which active goals and brand familiarity intersect, marketers can better anticipate consumer choices and design strategies to capture their attention in the marketplace.”

“It seems counterintuitive to market candy or cookies at a gym, but it seems that that’s when people are more likely to try it,’’ she says. “I think for marketers, using this real behavior and real choices is insightful.’’

“We are grateful to be able to share this research with others,’’ Brick says. She and her colleague are excited to pursue future projects related to this topic.