Insidious Choice

We love to have choice. Choice is at the very heart of freedom and without it we could hardly claim to have any autonomy. Without choice we wouldn’t have capitalism, religion, the need for law, not to mention thousands of ice cream flavours. It is a supposition that the more choices one has the better, and indeed having choice is essential to our sense of well-being and today we have more of it than ever and yet it seems we do not benefit from it psychologically. In fact we seem to suffer from having too much of it.

I frequently find myself frustrated by having to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to choose a toothbrush or toothpaste thinking why can’t each brand simply make me the best product they can instead of offering me multiple variations of features and 4 in 1 benefits all the way upto 12 in 1! Why would I forgo tartar control at the expense of whiter teeth when I can have it all? Its more than simply buyers remorse; it’s a sense of frustration that I have to needlessly choose because of some long-tail marketing strategy.

But you can have too much of a good thing. Studies have shown that though more personal choice is desired and more intrinsically motivational, that wrongly supposes we have an innate ability to manage more choice or feel any satisfaction as a result of making a choice. In a series of studies conducted at Colombia and Stanford measuring response and satisfaction to having extensive vs limited options in class essay topics, ice-cream varieties and jam sampling booths, each concluded somewhat counter intuitively that less choice results in more satisfaction and ultimately more purchases.

The studies concluded that though people were happy with having more choice they become frustrated with the responsibility of making the right choice and invariably less satisfied with the ones they make compared to those who had fewer choices. The phenomenon of choice overload has neurological, sociological and even existential root causes. Also called the “tyranny of choice” in the 2000 Barry Schwartz book “Paradox of Choice”, it plays a part in every aspect of our lives from potato chip flavours to the spouses we choose.

Some brands have used limiting choice to great affect. Apple laptops today come as one great laptop with three variations of size, they don’t even have colour options! But instead of “choice”, you have any even more powerful “ultra-choice”; customization within the ios platform and great selection of apps. Telcos could do wonders for their brands if they adopted a mass customization approach to their marketing rather than compartmentalizing different divisions and appearing to give me choice. Imagine if your data plan was managed across all services (Smart phone, DSL and wifi) and telephony rates suited to your actual usage rather than presumed usage. Even if that meant marginally less returns in the short run for the telco, customer satisfaction, retention and brand loyalty would more than compensate in the long run. It would also help the telcos better manage relationships with their customers and lead to more “share of life” and ultimately more profit.

The future of “choice” in the marketing world, for both brands and consumers, is in harnessing Big Data to serve new purposes and offer innovative value. Brands offering choice through customization that’s truly personalized and consumers outsource decision making to hyper algorithms tapping into meta data of reviews and usage stats. We already outsource much of our decision making to google and as our personal data enters the mainframe we effectively make decisions for others through our actions and opinions.

It’s a fascinating area of consumer behavior that touches upon the illusion of free will and very topically with the Snowden NSA scandal, on privacy and anonymity. How much of what we choose is with our own free will, and how do our choices unwittingly define who we are? With Big Data growing we may find ourselves free of the scourge of choice, but at the mercy of Big Brother.

“There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choice, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that choices, however wonderful, has entailed”

-Alain de Botton, on love.

(First appeared in Venture Magazine- November 2013)