Switching behaviour as a function of number of options: How much is too much for consumer choice decisions?

Abstract

The number of alternatives for consumers in almost all purchase situations is increasing at an extremely rapid pace. Although more choices may have many benefits to the consumers, recent studies on choice overload have found that choosing from large alternatives may lead to negative consequences. Majority of the choice overload research has compared only two groups of small versus large assortment size. In extant literature, there is no clarity as to what are small and large assortment sizes. Assortment size used as small in one study has been used as large in some other studies. Small assortment size varied from 2 to 60 choices and large assortment size from 3 to 300 choices in past studies, and the presence of choice overload has been reported at completely different levels of assortment sizes. This study has used an array of six choice sets from 6 to 36 options as compared to just two groups of small versus large assortment. Switching likelihood of consumers was used to capture the choice overload effect in this study. The probability of consumers switching their earlier choice was plotted as a function of number of options using binary logistic regression. Results showed that probability of switching was almost a linearly increasing function of assortment size from 6 to 36 options. The graph of predicted probabilities from 2 to 300 options showed a sharp increase in switching behaviour initially and subsequent flattening of the curve when options became very large.

Understanding high‐involvement product purchase through an innovative machine learning approach: A case of housing type choice

“…In contrast, buyers of high‐involvement products need to follow a thorough decision‐making process where the possibility of financial and non‐financial risks is higher than the low involvement products (Arora & Mail, 2018). Further, the high involvement products generally have high personal importance and sometimes situational importance (Sharma & Nair, 2017).…”

Effect of Aaker’s Model of Brand Personality on Customer Choice of Branded E-Retailing Outfits.

“…Their choice decision has attracted great attention from both researchers and practitioners (Wang, Sun, Niraj, Chung, & Su, 2019). Wang et.al (2019) suggested that it is affected significantly by a set of choice composition, although Sharma and Nair (2017) believed that customers may begin to experience choice overload as a result of extremely various assortments.…”

When repetitive consumption leads to predictions of faster adaptation

“…The influence of assortment size on consumer perception and consequent behavior has already been explored in the literature. Previous research demonstrates, for example, that assortment size determines the probability of consumers switching their earlier choices (Sharma & Nair, 2017) and deferring purchase (Iyengar, Huberman, & Jiang, 2004). Additionally, large assortments interfere negatively in preference construction (Chernev, 2003;Iyengar & Lepper, 2000), and lead to increasingly negative emotions, such as disappointment and regret (Schwartz, 2000).…”

“…Because of the relevance of repetition for this phenomenon, H1 proposes that when repetition is cued, consumers predict future hedonic adaptation. Wilson and Gilbert (2008) Galak et al 2009Sevilla et al 2016Assortment variety Sharma and Nair (2017) These studies investigate how assortment variety influences choice, enjoyment or adaptation (which includes satiation and habituation). Given the pervasive effects of variety on adaptation, these studies inform the proposition of H2 and the variety manipulations in study 2.…”