You are generally more successful in giving someone a fixed choice vs an open choice. Ex: “would you like chicken nuggets or a hamburger” has much more likelihood of a successful response than “what would you like for dinner”, which is more likely to elicit something like “I don’t know”
We think we want abundance of choice but in actuality we typically seem to find it overwhelming
Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) later turned out to be a delusional POS in other ways, but his formalization of the concept of a “confusopoly,” where companies collude to extract extra profits by making their products so complicated to evaluate that people have difficulty choosing between them because of decision fatigue, was spot-on.
This is one thing Apple tends to get right, more or less. They offer two or three tiers for every product class, and that’s it. (Do you want “standard, pro, or max”?)
I have plenty of criticisms for them, but reducing decision fatigue isn’t one of them. They do a decent job in that regard. They make up the “lost” profit in other ways.
Well my research wasn’t about consumer spending stuff; it was about helping parents of kids with autism that had arfid or other sensory issues related to food. I would imagine the same concept applies to consumer advertising bullshit though (that probably got way more funding hah)
I did research on this years ago
You are generally more successful in giving someone a fixed choice vs an open choice. Ex: “would you like chicken nuggets or a hamburger” has much more likelihood of a successful response than “what would you like for dinner”, which is more likely to elicit something like “I don’t know”
We think we want abundance of choice but in actuality we typically seem to find it overwhelming
Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) later turned out to be a delusional POS in other ways, but his formalization of the concept of a “confusopoly,” where companies collude to extract extra profits by making their products so complicated to evaluate that people have difficulty choosing between them because of decision fatigue, was spot-on.
how much later do you mean because that dude was pushing his variant of The Secret since about 1997
I mean, when he came out as a MAGAt and not just a woo-woo affirmations kook. Emphasis on the “POS” part, not just the “delusional” part.
This is one thing Apple tends to get right, more or less. They offer two or three tiers for every product class, and that’s it. (Do you want “standard, pro, or max”?)
I have plenty of criticisms for them, but reducing decision fatigue isn’t one of them. They do a decent job in that regard. They make up the “lost” profit in other ways.
Yeah choice overload right? Give people 50 types of jam and they’ll buy nothing, give them 5 and they’ll pick one
Well my research wasn’t about consumer spending stuff; it was about helping parents of kids with autism that had arfid or other sensory issues related to food. I would imagine the same concept applies to consumer advertising bullshit though (that probably got way more funding hah)