We all think we are great at making choices. Whether it's going into the grocery store and choosing a tub of ice cream to eat after dinner, or going to the mall to pick out a new pair of dress pants, we all like to think we are somewhat educated in why and how we make decisions.
Sheena Iyenger, a psycho analyst with an PhD in psychology from Stanford, has done a large number of studies on the art of choice, and how and why we make the decisions we do. Iyenger fostered an experiment in a grocery store involving jam. The focus of her study was to determine whether a different amount of choices (a lot of choices or a few) had an effect on the types of choices people made (or if they made a choice at all). Iyenger set up a sample-tasting station in a grocery store. First, she set up a station with 6 different flavors of jam, and then a station with 24 different flavors of jam. Iyenger found that with a station of 24 jams, 60% of people stopped to try the jam as compared to 40% of people with the 6 jars of jam. Conversely, of the people who stopped at the 24-jar station, only 3% of customers actually purchased a jar, whereas 30% of customers purchased a jar of name at the station of 6 jars.
In addition to her study, Iyenger argues that when providing people a vast array of choices, they tend to act in the following ways: Delaying choice, making worse choices, choosing something that makes them less satisfied, or not choosing anything at all! Iyenger argues that less truly is more when it comes to marketing different options to your customers! Whether or not this is true for your product and industry is for you to decide.
