Too much choice is bad for you

At last I have found someone else who only wants to use his mobile phone to call other mobile phones. Adam Shaw, who presents Business news on Radio 4’s Today programme, is writing about choice on his business round-up and suggesting that too much of it is a bad thing.

The one option he seeks in a phone – that it should simply allow him to communicate with other people’s phones – is the only choice that is unavailable to him.

He also bemoans the fact that, amongst a range of hundreds of different shirt styles available, he can’t find one that is just what he is looking for, and he suggests that the problem is that too much choice makes it hard to feel confident that the selection we make is the best option available, so that the opportunity cost of getting that choice wrong is higher.

Look at the example from behavioural economics of the supermarket which finds that it sells ten times as much jam when it only gives consumers six varieties to choose from, compared with very low sales when twenty four different pots are on offer, making a great display that attracts lots of attention but few sales, as buyers are confused by the risk of getting the choice wrong. He ponders whether we would be happier if we returned to a simpler economic model, with fewer choices and lower expectations of the utility we would gain from each decision that we make.

Perhaps Stelios has a point when he told Adam Shaw that his objective was to lower customer expectations so that they would be content with lower customer service levels!