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OPINION17 September 2019

New frontiers: when is choice a paradox?

Behavioural science Opinion UK

Determining whether more choice is better for people is by no means simple. Crawford Hollingworth and Liz Barker explore the latest research on this.

Choice is a hot topic in behavioural science. In fact, whether people prefer more, or less, choice has been debated for many years, originally when considering the choices of a donkey. In the 14th century, the French philosopher, Jean Burridan suggested that a donkey facing a choice between two piles of hay – two equally tempting options – would delay the choice, a conundrum sometimes known as ‘Buridan’s ass’.[ 1 ]

Here, we look at how our understanding of choice has, and is, continuing to develop – how we offer choice to people in the optimum ways, depending on the context, and even the person.

By the late twentieth century, the accepted view was that more choice was better – that offering a wealth of choice allowed consumers to better match their preferences and find exactly what they were looking for. In the past couple of decades, this view has gradually been challenged by a new camp, showcased by psychologists such as Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar, who found evidence to suggest that less choice was often a good thing.

They suggested that giving people fewer options led to more purchases, less choice paralysis and greater levels of satisfaction post-purchase. To some extent, this viewpoint has become increasingly relevant with both huge supermarkets and online retail stores, such as Amazon, where there are often hundreds of options and variations of the same product.

In a study published in 2000 by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, shoppers presented with fewer choices of jams in a California department store ended up purchasing more jam than those presented with a larger range of jam.[ 2 ]

Today, the landscape is far more nuanced, and the ‘jam study’ conclusions are thought to be over-generalised. In 2008, an experiment attempting to replicate the jam study, but in an upscale German supermarket, found no effect from varying the amount of choice offered.[ 3 ] Other experiments using the same approach but different products – chocolates or jelly beans – have found no effect from varying the degree of choice offered.[ 4 ]

Recent research based on two meta-analyses (when researchers pool many studies together to calculate an overall conclusion) finds that there are some situations where people might prefer more choice and others where they might prefer less.

In 2010, Benjamin Scheibehenne and colleagues conducted a large meta-analysis analysing 50 experiments, with a total of 5,036 participants, across 13 published or forthcoming journal articles and 16 unpublished papers between 2000 and 2009, from several different regions. While the average effect of changing the number of choices across the studies was effectively zero, this hid a wide variation – in some contexts, wider choice seems to increase consumer purchases whereas in other contexts, it reduces them.

Then, in 2015, a further meta-analysis was conducted by Alexander Chervev and his colleagues to try and pin down the exact conditions for when we really do prefer less choice.[ 5 ] They analysed 53 experiments published in 21 articles – all published between 2000 and 2014 – and identified four key factors when the number of options will affect choice. People will tend to prefer less choice when:

  • They have no well-defined preferences
  • Are unfamiliar with the options
  • The options are similar with no clear winner
  • The options are difficult to evaluate, perhaps if they are presented poorly.

To think through these factors, let’s look at the scenario Schwartz describes when he wants to buy a pair of jeans and is overwhelmed when the store assistant asks him: ‘Do you want slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit? You want button fly or zipper fly? You want stonewashed or acid-washed? Do you want them distressed? You want boot cut, tapered, blah blah." On and on he went. My jaw dropped. And after I recovered, I said, "I want the kind that used to be the only kind.'[ 6 ]

Schwartz suffers from choice overload in this context and would prefer less choice. However, many of us may have more clearly defined preferences and have jeans styles we like. In addition, we might also know what each of these terms mean and are familiar with most of the options. Some of us may even enjoy trying on different styles and select the ones we like best.

So, depending on what sort of shoppers a store wanted to attract, it might not be a good idea for it to reduce the number of jeans styles.

A new avenue of research also suggests that the type of product or service we are purchasing influences how many options we'd like to see. How might you go about buying perfume or aftershave? What about purchasing washing powder? The latest research suggests we approach these choices very differently.

  • Some products can be defined as necessities –utilitarian or functional products, or things we need to buy and have a specific use for such as detergents, toilet roll, door locks, kettles, family cars, laptops, and basic food items such as milk, bread and other staples. For most people they tend not to generate much of an emotional response in the buying and purchase process.
  • Other products can be defined as luxuries –hedonistic products or things which are nice to have such as perfume and aftershave, designer clothes, luxury watches and jewellery, sports cars, artwork, designer sunglasses, gourmet food, and cut flowers. These products tend to generate an emotional response and pleasure.

 A recent study by Sarah C. Whitley and colleagues found that people tended to demand and prefer more choice when searching for and choosing a hedonistic product than they did for more utilitarian products.

For example, they asked 286 participants to imagine they had both a car for commuting and a car they drove only for pleasure. One group got to choose a new paint colour for their commuting car, while the other group chose a new colour for the car they drove for pleasure. They found that participants in the ‘pleasure-car’ group wanted to choose from a larger assortment of paint colours and anticipated it might be harder to find the exact colour to match their preferences.

Another finding was that those in the ‘pleasure-car’ group believed their colour preferences were likely to be far more unique and different to others'. They believed their tastes were significantly differentiated from everyone else and therefore felt they needed a wider selection to choose from.[ 7 ]

However, it is just one study and needs further research ideally in a real-world context, although it does mesh with previous research outlined above by both Alexander Chernev and Scheibehenne who concluded that how sure we are of our preferences influences how much choice we prefer.

Other research by Chan-Wook Park and Byeong-Joon Moon has found that when purchasing hedonistic items, we tend to rely on our subjective, personal viewpoint (do we like it?) whereas for utilitarian items, we might rely more on objective data such as product reviews (think Which?!) and recommendations.

Harvard-based behavioural scientist Cass Sunstein suggests that fun or pleasurable purchases are more suited to wider choice where we might enjoy the process of choosing, whereas dull, mundane or difficult choices might be more suited to defaults or predictive choice (perhaps guided by personalised algorithms) and can help speed up the selection process.[ 8 ]

Alternatively, ‘satisficing’ might be the best option for mundane choices – picking an option that is ‘good enough’. And this may vary from person to person.

The Future

Looking to future avenues of research, the latest has begun to explore even more personalised determinants of choice. Princeton and UC Berkeley universities teamed up to test a hypothesis that choice overload may occur if people view wide ranges of choices as more representative of the self. For example, if someone asks you to pick a song to play out of a selection of two or three, it may be easy. However, if the selection is from a wide variety of musical styles and genres, your choice may become more reflective of how you express yourself, and as a result any selection you make becomes more open to judgement.

The team tested this theory in several studies; one included choosing an album to play like the example above. They found that the more options an individual is presented with, the more they believe their choice will reflect their self-expression and identity. This meant that people tried hard to make the best choice they could, which increased the difficulty and stress of deciding.[ 9 ]

Choice overload is not merely the result of having too many options, it depends on the context of the decision. If a consumer is making a decision about something important to their self-identity and which will be known publicly, they are more likely to experience choice overload.

However, previous research suggests there may be some groups who care less about self-expression than others and still feel overwhelmed by too much choice. Older people seem to find it harder to navigate a larger number of choices; they often suffer from choice overload and choice paralysis and prefer simple choices with minimal options and succinct information.

In a 2008 study where people were asked to make healthcare choices (for prescription drug plans, physicians, and hospitals) and everyday decisions (for cars, apartments or jams), older adults did not value choice as much as the young.

They tended to prefer half the number of options to younger adults and the very old ( 80+ year olds) tended to prefer even less choice than people in their 60s and 70s.[ 10 ]

Other studies found that the old have a greater tendency to defer decisions when faced with too much choice. They are also less likely to experience negative emotions afterwards, such as regret or worry about not making a purchase.[ 11 ]

In the realm of choice, we are now beginning to understand much better when choice overload sets in and can fine tune behavioural interventions and choice accordingly.

This has clear implications for marketers:

  • Thinking more about which camp or which factors a product (or service) might be affected by could help – is the product being sold hedonistic or utilitarian? Is it an impulse purchase or a larger, more significant choice? Is it a choice most consumers are going to have clear preferences about or will be familiar with having bought on numerous occasions before?
  • Thinking about how a product is advertised, packaged or displayed could also be beneficial. If it’s hedonistic, we might want to play on it and generate a strong emotional response. If utilitarian, we might want to make objective information easily accessible and make it easy to compare to other products.

By the Behavioural Architects’ Crawford Hollingworth and Liz Barker.

Reference:

[ 1 ] Zupko,  Jack  ( 2003 ), John  Buridan:  Portrait  of  a  Fourteenth-Century  Arts  Master,  Notre  Dame,  IN:  University  of  Notre Dame Press in Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. ( 2010 ) Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37, 409-424

[ 2 ] Iyengar, S. (Columbia) & Lepper, M. (Stanford), 2000, When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995-1006

[ 3 ] Scheibehenne, Benjamin ( 2008 ), “The Effect of Having Too Much Choice,” unpublished dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

[ 4 ] Greifeneder, Rainer ( 2008 ), “An Experimental Test of the Choice Overload  Hypothesis  Using  Chocolate,” unpublished manuscript, University of Mannheim, Germany; Scheibehenne, Benjamin ( 2008 ), “The Effect of Having Too Much Choice,” unpublished dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

[ 5 ] Chernev, A., Boeckenholt, U., & Goodman, J. ( 2015 ). Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25( 2 ), 333-358; Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. ( 2010 ) Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37, 409-424

[ 6 ] Schwartz, B. ‘The paradox of choice’ TED Talk, 2005

[ 7 ] Whitley, S., Trudel, R., Kurt, D. ‘The Influence of Purchase Motivation on Perceived Preference Uniqueness and Assortment Size Choice', April 2018, Journal of Consumer Research; Whitley, S., Trudel, R., Kurt, D. ‘How Many Versions of Product do Consumers Really Want?’ HBR, June 2018; Verhagen et al, ‘The Effect of Product Type on Consumer Preferences for Website Content Elements: An Empirical Study’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2010, p139-170

[ 8 ] Sunstein, Cass ‘Choosing not to choose', Oxford University Press, 2015, p185

[ 9 ] Cheek, Nathan N, Schwartz, Barry, Shafir, Eldar, ‘How Self-Expression Creates Choice Overload’, working paper presented at SJDM 2018

[ 10 ] Reed, A.E., Mikels, J., Simon, K. ‘Older Adults Prefer Less Choice than Younger Adults’ Psychology and Aging. 2008 Sep; 23( 3 ): 671–675

[ 11 ] Chen, Y. Ma, X., Pethtel, O., ‘‘Age Differences in Trade-Off Decisions: Older Adults Prefer Choice Deferral’’ Psychology and Aging. 2011 June; 26( 2 ): 269–273

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