I
live in New York City which is a true melting pot of every culture. We have
just about anything that you can imagine here, especially when it comes to
food! If you can imagine it, it’s probably out there. Chinese dessert pizza? No
problem.You can get that. One of the common “gee whiz” quips that the tourist
brochures like to tout is that, assuming there was zero turnover in
restaurants, if you were to eat three meals per day at a restaurant, it would
take 23 years to get through all of them. So why do my associates and I find
ourselves constantly trying to figure out what to eat? The answer is that we
actually have a total choice overload.
Sheena
Iyengar is a professor in the management department at Columbia University here
in NYC. I have met Dr. Iyengar a few times through her husband, Dr. Garud
Iyengar, who is a fellow member of a running group. They are both absolutely
delightful and extremely brilliant people. I was therefore very excited when I
saw that we were going to be using one of her videos for our blog this week! In
her TED Talk, Dr. Iyengar (2011) discusses choice overload and how it can be
overcome. Choice overload is where we are presented so many options that we
become overwhelmed and, as she says, “we choose not to choose”. She outlines
three main consequences of choice overload. They are:
1.
Engagement
– the consumer/decision maker tends to procrastinate in making the choice.
2.
Decision
quality – when we finally commit, we often make a choice that does not fit our
actual need.
3.
Satisfaction
– we are often displeased with the decision that we actually make.
Here’s
a perfect example. Imagine it is a Saturday evening and you decide that you
just want to watch a movie at home and relax. Maybe you have Netflix or Hulu or
Amazon Prime. You open up the “browse” section and are faced with thousands of
titles from which to choose. It feels like you spend more time clicking through
the options looking for something that suits your fancy than you actually spend
watching whatever you end up picking and once you do pick something, you get 20
minutes into it and realize that you are completely bored and you have to start
the process all over! How frustrating is that? Obviously, deciding what to
watch on a Saturday night won’t have lasting effects but imagine some other
areas where we face choice overload.
Fortunately,
Dr. Iyengar (2011) also outlines four methodologies for reducing the burden of
choice overload. First, the supplier can cut choices down. I have a membership
to Costco. Last year, I remember going there to get paper towels. I usually get
one particular brand but I noticed that they only had two options – a different
brand or their generic brand. The more I went there, the more I noticed this
with other products as well. There usually are only two or three brand choices
for any given product. Costco has actually made this their model – to offer a
wide variety of products but limit the brands. This strategy streamlines
logistics and reduces the amount of time that consumers spend searching for
products thus moving them through the store more quickly and improving the
overall experience (Hu and Chuang, 2009). “This practice enables Costco to
produce high sales volumes and rapid inventory turnover” (p. 132). The second
methodology to mitigate choice overload is concretization of the implications
of the choice (Iyengar, 2011). When faced with overwhelming choices, the
consequences of each choice must be vivid. I will speak just a little more on
that in a moment. The third methodology is categorization. It is much easier to
manage choice overload when the choices are broken down by category. Think back
to that Saturday night movie selection of which I was previously speaking. Even
though it can still be a daunting task to choose what to watch, the choice is
much easier when you at least know a genre that you want. As I write this, we
are approaching Halloween so I would imagine that a lot of people will gravitate
toward the horror category this weekend. I, however, prefer comedies. Instead
of being faced with thousands titles, we can select the genre and reduce our
choices to just a few. The final methodology is to condition the chooser for
complexity. What is meant by that is that we should start with small choices
and work up to complex choices. In the example that Dr. Iyengar uses, customers
are customizing vehicles. Instead of starting with the a complex choice (56
choices), they start with the easiest choice (4 choices) and then work their
way up to the option that requires 56 choices. Though the choices remain the
same, this somehow conditions the psyche to make the choices more easily.
As an
Army recruiter, our applicants face choice overload. Honestly, this is not an
aspect, though, that I really considered until now. Obviously a decision to
enlist into the Army is slightly more life-altering than decided what brand of
cereal to purchase so I have an obligation to ensure that my team does what we
can to mitigate the overload that our applicants face. Our applicants must
first choose between being a civilian or being in the military. If they pick
military, they have four branches from which to choose. If they pick the Army,
we have 150 different specialties. That is a lot to consider and can cause
significant overload and shock. So how do we mitigate this using the
methodologies that Dr. Iyengar suggests? There are two that I believe are the
most applicable to us. First, though we cannot reduce the choices that our
applicants must make, we can at least make it appear that we “cut” our choices.
One way that we accomplish this is by initially eliminating the selection of
specialties. Everything can be boiled down to one choice – does the applicant want
to join the Army or not? Instead of worrying about in what capacity they will
be a Soldier, for how long, or where, the decision is simplified to a simple
yes or no. However, since those choices will eventually have to be made, what
we are doing is actually conditioning our applicants for complexity. Once the
decision has been made to enlist, they can choose whether they want to be
Active Duty (full time) or Army Reserve (part time), the options that they may
want (Airborne, Ranger), the job that they want, and, last, the length of the
contract that they want. By at least feigning cutting of choices, the can go
from easy to complex. The second method that we use is concretization of their
choices. By conducting a solid interview, we artfully find what motivates them
and we bring that to the forefront. For some, it is a solid career with a good
paycheck. For others, it is money for college. The list of reasons to serve is
as varied as there are Soldiers serving. Part of our job is to show them how
the Army will fill that need in their lives. Just last week, we had an
applicant that was about to back out of shipping to Basic Training. I
remembered, though, that he told me that he was enlisting for the Post 9/11 GI
Bill. I asked him what he was going to do if he didn’t go to training. He said
he would just go ahead and go to college now but he didn’t know how he was
going to pay for it. By painting a picture of his future both without and with
the Post 9/11 GI Bill, that motivational piece again was shown to be an
eventual reality in his future. The Post 9/11 GI Bill pays 100% of tuition and
fees for any public university and provides a housing allowance, by the way.
This young man is going to be a food services specialist (cook) for 36 months
in the Army and then intends to attend a private university here in NYC that
has additional veterans’ benefits so his 36 months will actually yield him
nearly $330,000 in education benefits on top of everything that he earns while
in the Army. When I showed him that again on paper, the picture was very vivid
and concrete.
I
understand that my current organization is very unique but the realities of
choice overload are pretty universal. Regardless of where I find myself in the
future, I think that these methods to reduce the burden of choice overload will
be beneficial.
Hu,
F., & Chuang, C. C. (2009). How can different brand strategies lead to
retailers' success? comparing
manufacturers brand for coca-cola and private brand for costco. Journal
of Global Business Issues, 3(1),
129-135. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/223740994?accountid= 27203
Iyengar, S. (2011, November). Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier [Video
file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose
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