Sheena Iyengar gave an excellent speech about the affects of
choosing. In her talk, she discussed
four methods to help make choosing easier and better overall. Her four rules for make choosing easier are
to first cut. By cutting out unnecessary
options, we improve our choosing experience.
We talked in a our class discussion this week how having a variety of
options can cause human error in the decision making process. The Wharton text discussed how a combination
of both human effort and automated effort can help in the decision making
process. When combining this with
Iyengar’s idea, I feel that this would help with the decision making process
because having an automated effort would help to reduce the amount of
information we would have to immediately process.
The next step that Iyengar suggests to help making choosing
easier is to make your options more concrete.
She used a great example that I can relate to with cash vs credit. We are more inclined to make rash decision
and choose to buy things that we may not have really needed/wanted because the money
didn’t feel real and it did not feel concrete to us.
The next step is to have categorizes. Categorizing makes decision easier to make
because as consumers, we can handle categories much easier than we can handle
individual products. I think Zappos is a
great example of this. While sometimes I
can get overwhelmed with the options, Zappos offers a wide variety of options
that are categorized in a variety of different ways. This also leads to Iyengar’s last step, which
is to condition you for complexity.
Continuing with Zappos, they follow this idea well by starting out with
minimal categories and minimal options to choose from. Once you have made your first initial choice,
let’s say shoes, you are then led to another option to make a choice. This next category offers just a bit more
options and slowly conditions you for the ability to handle more options.
I think all four of Iyengar’s steps are great for helping
with choosing. I am someone who can get
overwhelmed easy, so make the options simpler and less-complex can really help
with the decision-making. Some
additional steps I may take is to narrow down categories to what my interests
are and what I am shopping for. From a
business stand point, knowing your market and sticking to what they are generally
interested in can also help reduce any anxiety with customer choosing through thousands
of items.
Hoch, Stephen J., Howard Kunreuther, and Robert E. Gunther. Wharton on Making Decisions. New York: Wiley, 2001. Print.
Iyengar, S. (Director) (2011, November 1). Sheena Iyengar: How to make choosing easier. TEDSalon NY2011. Lecture conducted from TED Talk, .
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