choices

Choices make life difficult. I agree with Barry Schwartz in that choices (the increasing demand for options) decrease consumer confidence and satisfaction, it overwhelms us. In this podcast, Schwartz discusses his research and how it can apply in the online world. He gives practical advice for retailers on how they can satisfy customers and be successful in the online world. Barry Schwartz used to think that the more choice people have the better off they were, but he has found evidence that this assumption can be false, which is why he talks about it as a summary of evidence and an argument on why it overwhelms us when we have too many options- and I think he is right on.

Barry Schwartz talks about how we have 175 salad dressings in our supermarkets, 250 kinds of cereal (all very delicious in my personal opinion). You go to Circuit City or Best Buy and you can build 6million different stereo systems out of the components in stock. Looking in the newspaper, there are 10,000 mutual funds & stocks to pick from. There is no less than 30 kinds of dental floss. There’s simply no area of life where people don’t have an extraordinarily large number of options in this world.

There are different effects that having too much choice produces:

1. People end up choosing none- they simply pass.
(meaning: a retailer may actually sell less; we don't know how to choose- for me, the decision is all together too much of a hassle, so I walk away, empty handed).

2. People overcome this indecision and choose- sometimes badly.
(meaning: So you might choose by brand and price and ignore all those wonderful subtle features that producers of these goods take so much trouble to create. Now if it happens that all you care about is the simple things like brand and price, you’re not harmed by this simplifying but if you actually care about other things, you’ll end up making a less than optimal choice).

3. People manage to choose, and choose well- but will be less satisfied if chosen from a large set.
(meaning: So even though you do well, you end up disappointed, since not everything you pick will have the best qualities- it is all about trade-offs).

For myself, I recently bought a digital camera at Best Buy. There were tons of options to choose from- first it was pick the brand. Okay I have Sony, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, the list goes on and on. Next it was pick the megapixels- there are a wide range of these. Then it was pick the color- should I pick a fun color like pink, blue, red- or should I go for the classic colors like silver or black. Going on it was pick the price range, pick the features, pick the camera case, pick the sd card, etc. At the moment I thought, geez can someone just know what I like and tell me "this is the one you need" and make this decision easier so I can start using it? Anyhow, I felt as I left the store I had made the best decision I could have- but in the back of my head, I kept thinking, what if I got that other brand, what if I got that other color, is this camera too thick? would I have liked the others more? I wanted the best one.

So I completely agree with Barry Schwartz when he talks about how even if you make the right choice, you end up thinking about all those other wonderful things you’ve passed up, and that makes your choice less satisfying. We're all human, we want to know we have the best from what's out there- and we obviously need help making decisions like these (whether deciding which camera we want down to which flavor of cookie we want to eat).