CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
The Problem of Plenty
Is having too many choices taking a toll on your mental health
A few days back I noticed that my work shoe looked a bit dilapidated and needed replacement. Despite knowing what I generally like, I spent over five hours across three online shopping apps, browsing a catalog of god knows how many mules, I have yet to make up my mind. This experience isn’t unique — I’ve faced similar situations with various online retail purchases, whether it’s shoes, clothes, or groceries. Increasingly, it feels easier to visit a favorite brand store or subscribe to automatic refills for key items.
I do not want to expend my mental bandwidth making these countless inconsequential decisions. So, in a lot of categories that I buy, I am moving back to offline from online. Turns out this is a heavily researched subject in the arena of consumer behavior.
The Choice Overload — Consumer Behaviour Experiments
Wider selection attracts more customers yet less conversion because of the decision paralysis linked to choice overload. There have been multiple experiments on what constitutes the best number — attracting consumers and giving them enough choices to make a purchase. The most famous is the jam experiment.
The jam experiment throws the magic number at 6. This magic number of 6 has been arrived at in other similar experiments. Two groups of students from the social psychology class were presented with an opportunity to write an essay on a movie, which could earn them 2 extra credits. The first group got to pick from 6 predefined topics, while the other group had 30 topics to choose from. 75% of students in group 1 completed the exercise as opposed to 30% in group 2.
Solving the Problem in the online world
In our digital/online journeys, companies try to solve this problem through a multitude of other techniques.
- Social Proofing — Netflix, which I find easiest to navigate and use instead of the plethora of other OTTs I subscribe to, addresses this by showing us the Trending and Top 10 in your country. Confused by what to watch, catch up with what others in your region are watching — must be good right if so many others are glued to it too?
- Chunking — Breaking down the choices so that at every stage you are answering a series of questions — Yes / No and that lands you to the recommended product with 3 other choices to pick from. Airbnb does this very well.
There are a host of other techniques that are used by E-commerce companies explained quite well in this blog — https://cultmethod.com/articles/reduce-choice-overload/
The Choice in the Age of AI
However, as we move towards the environment of AGI — how will this pan out? Soon enough as shown in the OpenAI and Google I/O demos, all of us will have AI personal assistants. Much of our decision-making overload will be handled by these personal assistants. They’ll narrow it down to probably three choices to pick up from — so that we still feel in control of our buying decision.
However, this raises an intriguing question: will the integration of AI in our daily decision-making ultimately empower us with better choices, or will it lead to a future where we relinquish too much control and have fewer genuine choices? Only time will tell.
