A big part of this is that people don't consider things from a purely functional perspective. Yes, ultimately a porcelain bowl and a majolica bowl from Europe serve the same functional purpose, but they can have different social meanings. Two of the most common reasons to differentiate the kind of materials you are using, despite being functionally identical, is to demonstrate your social status or group membership.

For porcelain, it is a rare commodity in that it is difficult to acquire in Europe (at least until local European porcelain production starts up) and so if you have porcelain in your house, that marks you as being someone special since not everyone can afford to have it. The same is true of any rare/expensive item. Think of a Bentley and a Camry. Yes, they are both cars and are essentially the same functionally (despite some differences in engineering, but as far as the purpose they serve) but they serve as markers of social status. In archaeology at least we refer to these kinds of items as "prestige goods" to denote that they have this function in marking and reinforcing social status. A lot of times these kinds of items end up being regulated by social elites as well. Consider sumptuary laws that prohibit certain classes of people from wearing certain materials or types of clothing/jewelry. For instance, Vicuna wool being reserved exclusively for making the clothing of the Sapa Inca of the Inca empire. These sorts of cases make it obvious that the purpose of the item is mainly to differentiate between higher and lower status individuals.

The other purpose of these types of items is to mark group membership. For instance, priests wearing particular types of clothing that mark them as distinct from the rest of the population. Of course, this often crosses into the territory of "prestige goods" in that group membership also often corresponds with social status. Another good example, involving porcelain this time, would be that in several parts of the Americas (I'm thinking particularly Spanish Florida and the south Arizona missions), there is pretty good evidence that the Spanish missionaries in these locations went to pretty great lengths to import Chinese porcelain and European made ceramics, even though locals made perfectly functional ceramics themselves. The Native Americans living at these missions would most continue using the kinds of pottery they had always been making, while the friars would be using their porcelain and majolica. There isn't any functional reason the friars couldn't use local pottery, but by using these other kinds of ceramic they mark themselves as separate form the Native Americans living at the mission, both in being Spanish (and so using Spanish ceramics) and in being of a different social class.

Prudence Rice has done a great study of Spanish settlers in a valley in Peru during the 16th and 17th centuries where she demonstrated that they went to pretty great lengths to raise cows and pigs for their own consumption, even though the meat sources the locals had been and continued to eat where completely adequate. She makes the argument that, in addition to the Spanish colonists having developed a particular palette that preferred beef and pork, eating these kinds of food that were difficult to come by was both a status symbol and way of marking them as Spanish and not indigenous. The same sort of argument can be applied to porcelain in some places.

Also, there are some functional differences between porcelain and the earthenware and stoneware used in Europe. Porcelain is defined as being pottery that has been highly vitrified. Vitrified meaning it has turned to glass. Consequently, you can use porcelain vessels to hold liquids without much problem. Earthenware (and to a lesser extent, stoneware) ceramics are fired at a much lower temperature and so lose liquid to a degree and require that the potter apply a coating to the surface of the vessel to prevent loss of liquids. If you do apply a glaze, slip or other similar coating, the functionality is basically the same as porcelain, but it does require that step.

My bet is that i was much easier to clean then what they were using previously.