Can a head start in the marketplace give a product an edge over quality? In the field of economics, the standard response until now has been "yes" when platforms are competing to become the single dominant player. A favourite example is the QWERTY keyboard, which became leader after appearing first in the market even though many consider it to be an inferior platform.

However, a new study by Tanjim Hossain of HKUST and his co-author John Morgan argues that the evidence for this argument does not hold up: the market always goes to the superior platform.

"The idea that self-fulfilling expectations can lead an inferior platform to triumph despite better alternatives has now become standard in economics. Yet the paucity of modern examples illustrating this is striking. The validity of the QWERTY example itself is in question, with some suggesting there is little evidence that it is inferior to [other keyboard layouts]," they say.

"We show that somehow the market always manages to solve the QWERTY problem. Using lab experiments, we show that our subjects never got stuck on an inferior platform ?even when it enjoyed a substantial first-mover advantage."

Their experiments were designed to give one platform a monopoly advantage at first (in most cases the inferior one), and to introduce competition later. Eighty participants joined one of three sessions, each consisting of 15 periods, during which they were grouped into teams of four and had to decide which platform to locate themselves on.

Once the competitor appeared and the participants were able to choose between the inferior or superior platform, the results were unambiguous, even when conditions were manipulated to boost the inferior platform.

"In every instance the market tipped to a single platform, but in none of these instances was that platform the inferior one. This was true despite giving the inferior platform an initial monopoly advantage that persisted for a full 33 per cent of the lifespan of the market. It was true regardless of whether the inferior platform had a higher or lower access fee. It was true even when the inferior platform enjoyed the possibility of a novelty effect, from being introduced later [after the superior one]," the authors said.

There were some short term effects of these manipulations, but they did not last. When the superior platform was introduced and its cost was higher, its market share was slower to build up, but after four periods it reached 90 per cent of the market and held steady.

When the superior platform had the monopoly advantage at first, it lost some market share when the new but inferior platform was introduced but this novelty affect lasted only two periods and the superior platform's share soon returned to 100 per cent.

"It is almost 25 years since the economics of QWERTY first appeared. The intellectual impact is undeniable and it is now accepted as conventional wisdom rather than something counter-intuitive. While the QWERTY effect is certainly an interesting theoretical possibility, the dearth of examples of the phenomenon in the field and now in the lab, leads us to conclude the danger lies more in the minds of theorists than in the reality of the marketplace," the authors said.