At the moment I am re-reading Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice (or rather to be accurate I am listening to it via Audible this time) and my attention was drawn to some interesting case studies which are particularly relevant to market researchers.
More choices, less preference
Two of Schwartz’s examples are drawn from jam and essay topics. Researchers created two scenarios in a food store showing a table of jams, one with 6 jams and the other with 24 jams, after sampling the jams the customers were given a $1 coupon they could exchange for one of the jams. The cell who saw 24 jams did not sample more jams and they were less likely to buy a jam than those who just saw six jams.
In the second study students were offered either 6 or 30 different topics in order to gain an extra credit. The students offered six topics were more likely to write an essay and the average marks from the students offered the six topics were higher than those who were offered the 30.
Thinking about a choice changes the choices
This time Schwartz’s examples included posters and jam again. In the jam study two groups were asked to choose their favourite jam from a range of five. One group were not given any instructions, they used whatever method they wanted to. The second group were asked to think about their reasons whilst making their choices. The first group produced results closer to those of experts than the group asked to think about their choices – this does not mean the first group are more ‘right’, but it does mean that thinking about the reasons changed the results.
The second test divided students into two groups, who were then shown five posters. One group simply chose the one they liked the most, the other group had to write about what they thought about the posters before making a choice (and they were told nobody would ever read what they wrote). The students were also allowed to take a copy of their favourite poster home. The first difference was that the two groups tended to choose different posters. The second difference was that when the students were later contacted the students who had not been forced to think about their decisions were happier than those who had been asked to write about the posters before choosing.
So what does this mean for MR
Researchers know that context matters, but sometimes we forget and we let lists get too long, thinking we will get more information, but we can’t.
Most choices are not made following a rationalisation process. Research should try to mirror the real world, get people to make their choices early, and then explore why (either with revealed structures or even with different samples).
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