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Consumer psychology: the more choices, the harder it is to choose?
Consumers' familiarity with a certain kind of goods will affect their willingness to buy. The study was published in the latest issue of Psychological Science.
"Our research shows that when setting the optional range of a certain kind of goods, it is best for merchants to consider the consumer's understanding of this kind of goods." Liat said that he is a researcher at Arison Business School, an interdisciplinary research center in Herzliya, Israel.
Hadar said, "in areas that consumers don't know much about, such as alcohol, more choices should be provided; On the contrary, in those areas that consumers are familiar with, such as soft drinks, there should be fewer choices. "
People subjectively think that their knowledge of something can be called "subjective knowledge". Unlike "real knowledge" or "professional knowledge", "subjective knowledge" is actually not so reliable. (Translator's Note: For example, Xiao Ming, who has never been in love, thinks that he "knows a lot about women", which is just his "subjective understanding". However, Xiao Wang, who has been in love for several times and specializes in gender psychology research, is called a "love expert", which can also be regarded as "professional knowledge". However, previous studies have found that people often rely on "subjective knowledge" to make decisions in daily life, such as making economic decisions.
Hadar of UCLA Anderson School of Management and colleague Sanjay
Soder conducted a series of experiments. In the experiment, the subjects learned that they want to choose a specific product from a certain kind of goods (such as coffee, wine or video games). The researcher makes some subjects feel that they know this product better than others, while others feel that others know this product better than themselves.
For example, in the first experiment of "choosing coffee", some subjects learned that others are coffee experts who know this kind of products very well, while others learned that others are teenagers who know less about this kind of products. As a result, the former's "subjective knowledge" is low.
Then, the researchers asked the subjects to choose a specific product (their favorite) from a pile of similar products, and they were faced with the choice of "one out of five" or "one out of twenty-five". After that, the subject has a chance to draw a lottery, and the winner can take the product he just selected, or get $5 directly-in this way, the subject will really compare and choose carefully.
The experimental results show that for the subjects with higher subjective knowledge, when faced with more choices, they will be more inclined to get $5 directly in the lottery (which means they are too lazy to bother to choose); On the contrary, for subjects with low "subjective knowledge", when faced with more choices, they will be more inclined to take away the varieties just selected in the lottery (which means they are more willing to pick and choose).
According to Hadar and Sood, when faced with more choices, consumers with high "subjective knowledge" will feel that there are too many options to make decisions, or they are more likely to be dissatisfied with their decisions afterwards; And those consumers with low "subjective knowledge" will feel that more options also provide more information, which will help them shop around and thus help them choose more situations.
However, the follow-up experiments also show that only when the product information is easy to understand, consumers with low subjective knowledge will tend to have more choices. (Translator's Note: For example, Xiao Ming, who doesn't know wine, goes to the supermarket to buy wine. There are many kinds of wines on the shelves of supermarkets, all of which are marked with alcohol content, taste and price. Xiao Ming easily chose his favorite combination; Kobayashi, who doesn't know computers, went to Bainaohui to buy computers and saw many kinds of computers. Although all the parameters such as CPU, memory, hard disk and graphics card are marked, Kobayashi doesn't understand them at all and doesn't help at all. )
For example, when consumers with low "subjective knowledge" buy wine, if all the wines are marked with useful information, such as taste and grape varieties, then consumers like to have more choices; On the contrary, if all wines are only marked with the name of the winery, then this information is of no use to consumers, and more choices will only make consumers more at a loss.
Previous studies have shown that this phenomenon ("subjective knowledge" affects the preference for the number of options) is also common in daily life, such as making economic decisions.
"Some studies show that most employees know nothing about' 401k retirement benefit plan', and even if detailed information is provided, people can't understand it," Hadar explained. Our research results are consistent with previous empirical observations. When faced with more kinds of' 4065438+,
Hadar and Sood believe that their work will provide new ideas for policy makers, whether in designing optional varieties of some goods on supermarket shelves or in designing investment plans or pension welfare plans.