Consumer Vertigo

The Gap’s many choices, he says, have made buying jeans “a complex decision in which I was forced to invest time, energy and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety and dread”.

Like most culturally successful social criticism, the anti-choice critique starts with what strikes most people as an obvious truth: too many options can be overwhelming.

People are in fact less likely to make a decision when they face too many alternatives. In a now-famous experiment, recounted in Schwartz’s book, researchers set up a table at a specialty food store offering samples of jam. Customers could try as many flavours as they wanted. After tasting the jam, they got a coupon for $1.00 off a jar of any flavour. Half the time the sample table offered six flavours, and half the time it offered 24.

The results were striking: 30 per cent of the customers who tasted jams from the small selection later bought a jar, compared to only 3 per cent of those who sampled from 24 different flavours. “Having ‘too much’ choice seems … to have hampered their later motivation to buy,” report Iyengar and Lepper. More sample choices made the jams less appealing.

It’s possible, of course, that a large display attracted a different sort of customer: people like me who never buy jam but were intrigued by the huge variety. And the 24 samples did in fact attract more tasters: 60 per cent of the shoppers who saw that display stopped for a sample compared to 40 per cent with the smaller layout.

But that difference alone can’t explain a tenfold difference in jam buying. Something important seems to be missing from the simple social science model that says that since we’re always free to ignore some alternatives, expanding options inevitably makes us better off.

Human minds aren’t that rational. We don’t ignore or forget forgone alternatives. We often fret over them. And knowing we may regret any particular decision, sometimes we simply won’t choose.

In another study by the same researchers, also recounted by Schwartz, subjects were shown a group of Godiva chocolates and asked which chocolate they would buy for themselves, based on the name and look of each. Half chose from six chocolates and half chose from 30. (The experiment limited its subjects to people who liked chocolate but didn’t regularly buy Godiva.)

Those who selected from the larger group took longer to make a decision. In a survey after the experiment, they were more likely to say there were “too many” chocolates to choose from and that choosing was frustrating and difficult. But they were also more likely to say that choosing was enjoyable - a result Schwartz omits from his book. People don’t dislike choice, even overwhelming choice. They have mixed feelings about it. And in the real world, especially the real marketplace, they often have help making decisions.

It’s true that human minds cannot evaluate an infinite number of choices, and that we’re prone to feel regret when we think about the alternatives we’ve forgone. But human beings aren’t biologically evolved to live in subzero temperatures or keep their teeth much beyond the age of 40 either. Culture and technology matter as much as biology.

For good scientific reasons, psychology experiments systematically screen out the habits and business practices that make real-life choices, especially shopping decisions, manageable. The experiments are designed to understand the mind, not the market.

Ralphs shoppers aren’t overwhelmed by 724 kinds of produce because they don’t experience every variety as a separate choice. The exotic fruits are grouped together, as are the potatoes and yams, the lettuce bags, and the apples. Godiva sells its chocolates in selections - nuts and caramels in one box, dark chocolates in another, truffles in another - not piece by piece. Businesses have strong incentives not just to offer options but to help customers navigate those choices.