You are looking for a new sweater. One label says made in Europe. The other says knitted in Amsterdam.

Same fabric, price and look. But something about the second one feels different. It feels more specific and more unique.

That reaction is not a coincidence, and it is not about Amsterdam being a better city than Europe as a concept. It is about a cognitive process that happens automatically every time you process a word and new research shows that marketers who understand this process can use it to shape how consumers perceive their products.

Why words carry more than their meaning

Language is not stored in your brain as a flat list of words with definitions attached. It is organized as a hierarchy, a nested set of categories and subcategories that structure how you relate concepts to each other.

Categorization Theory, the framework researchers Guang-Xin Xie and Ann Kronrod draw on in their 2026 study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, explains this clearly. Words sit at different depths within their semantic categories. The word dog lives at a relatively shallow level within the category of mammals. The word poodle lives deeper. Rose sits deeper than flower. Cheesecake sits deeper than dessert, which itself sits deeper than food. The deeper a word sits in its category, the narrower the set of things it refers to. And that narrowness is precisely what creates the feeling of uniqueness.The researchers call this mechanism categorical depth and they argue it is the engine behind what they name the "precise-unique effect."

How the brain signals uniqueness

When you read a precise word, your brain retrieves a narrower set of comparable alternatives. There are fewer things that count as a poodle than there are things that count as a dog. There are fewer places that count as Amsterdam than there are places that count as Europe.

That narrower retrieval makes the associated product feel more distinctive. It occupies a more specific slot in your mental landscape. It has fewer alternatives. And products with fewer alternatives feel more unique. Crucially, this process is not about trust, clarity, or informativeness. It is not about the word feeling more credible or the brand appearing more competent. It operates at a more automatic, linguistic level before deliberate evaluation even begins.

Four experiments, one consistent finding

Xie and Kronrod ran four preregistered experiments to test this effect, each in a different consumer context.

In Study 1, 300 participants read an ad for a sweater. One group saw the tagline made in Europe. The other saw knitted in Amsterdam. A pretest confirmed that Europe and Amsterdam were rated equally positively as places of origin and carried no inherent uniqueness advantage on their own. Yet the sweater described as knitted in Amsterdam was rated significantly more unique.

In Study 2, 193 participants imagined passing a museum sign in a small town. One sign read: "Old Town Museum. Come explore our art, culture, and crafts." The other read: "Come explore our photography, folklore, and pottery." The museum with the more precise sign was rated as significantly more unique, even after controlling for word familiarity.

Study 3 addressed a potential objection: maybe precise words simply feel rarer, and rarity drives the effect. To test this, the researchers chose words where the more precise version was also the more familiar one. Participants imagined receiving a text about a craft fair. One version featured clothing, houseware, and metal artwork. The other featured shirts, cookware, and gold artwork. The words in the precise condition (shirts, gold) were more common in everyday language than their less precise counterparts. And yet the fair described with precise words was still rated as more unique. Categorical depth, not word rarity, was driving the result.

Study 4 took it a step further, into a restaurant review context. 418 participants read a customer review of a local pizzeria. One version used precise food words: mozzarella, focaccia, mint topping, limonata, mascarpone sauce. The other used general alternatives: cheese pizza, appetizer bites, herb topping, a drink, creamy sauce. The pizzeria described with precise food words was perceived as dramatically more unique with perceived uniqueness scores of 5.67 versus 4.07 on a seven-point scale.

When precision translates into action, and when it does not

Perceived uniqueness is not always what you want. Study 4 also varied the mood participants were in before reading the review: some imagined craving a special pizzeria, others a simple one. For those wanting something special, precise language made the pizzeria more attractive and raised their intention to visit. For those wanting something simple, it backfired. They were less likely to visit the pizzeria described with precise words than the one described with general words.

The researchers call this the moderating role of need for product uniqueness. Precise words reliably make a product feel more unique. But a sale only follows when uniqueness is what the customer is after in that moment. When it is not, precision pushes people away.

Two things to keep in mind

The effect itself is robust. It showed up in ads, museum signs, event announcements and customer reviews, and it held even when the precise words were more familiar than the general ones. Still, two limits matter in practice.

Precision makes your message narrower. Vague words leave room for more people to see themselves in them, so precise words risk speaking past anyone outside your niche. The researchers give the example of wireless earbuds: a general description reaches a broad audience, a precise one speaks to music lovers. The same logic applies to timing. Early in a decision, when people are still orienting, broader language fits how they think. Closer to the purchase, precision fits better.

The research is about single words, not about the overall tone of your brand. Swapping one word for a deeper one is enough. Longer or denser copy is a different question that this study does not answer.

Take home points

• Swap general words for precise ones in your product descriptions. “Knitted in Amsterdam” works better than “made in Europe”. “Mozzarella” beats “cheese”. It costs nothing and takes seconds.
• Match precision to the moment. Use precise words when people are looking for something special or are close to buying. Think food, fashion, travel, design. Go broader when they want something familiar or are still comparing options.
• Reviews count too. Study 4 showed the effect in a customer review, not in brand copy. A simple question like “what did you order?” gets customers to use precise words, and that makes your product feel more unique to the next reader.
• Precision is not complexity. The effect comes from narrower categories, not from technical terms. “Gold” is more precise than “metal” and more familiar. You do not need jargon.