Last week I went to the store to buy a ceiling fan for my oldest daughter. Her room gets hotter than the others because it’s in the front-corner which gets the sun’s full exposure, and because our A/C unit is on the other side of the house in the attic, so her duct has the longest run. I thought it would be an easy task but boy was I wrong. Two hours later, I had a fan. Let me explain the paralyzing decision-making process I went through to give my daughter’s room a breeze (note to Dyson: Make a ceiling fan!).
It was a typical home improvement store setup: the 52-inch fans were on the left and priced from $70-$200, and the 44-inch fans were on the right and ranged from $40-$120. Each side had about 30 models to choose from; so there were 60 fan choices in total. The brands were Hampton Bay, Hunter, a Hunter sub-brand called Harbor Breeze, Monte Carlo, and allen + roth. I asked the associate and he said Hunter was the best and ran the quietest (a concern for me as some of my house fans run loud and sometimes make obnoxiously sporadic noises… I can never pinpoint the problem). I quickly became overwhelmed with my options for buying a fan just looking at pricing, colors, and brands, but these choices were only the beginning.
As time passed and I was approaching 20 minutes in the fan section, I noticed a white sticker on each box. The stickers displayed each fan’s specifications. Things like: Airflow speed, electric use, airflow efficiency, blade shape & size, mounting height, and a few other random things. I wondered why the manufacturers even showed this. Of course I want a fan with good airflow that doesn’t cause my circuit breaker to overload! Yet each fan’s specs varied quite a bit, so I had to consider them. I didn’t want to come home with a great-looking fan (my daughter told me she wanted an antique bronze finish) that didn’t adequately cool her room. I spotted a few contenders. One was a Hampton Bay for $60; another was a Hunter for $100. That’s when the process took another turn.
I noticed some Hunter fans were in green boxes and had “5-Minute Install” on them. These ceiling fans were priced $20 higher because a few parts came pre-assembled and the fan would take less time to install in theory. In reality, there’s no way to hang a ceiling fan in five minutes (not counting the time to take down your current light fixture), but it would take less time no doubt. At this point, I had to fight off strong feelings to leave the store empty-handed. But after pacing a few minutes, I decided to hang in there. My daughter’s comfort was in my hands! So I (rather desperately) picked up one of these 5-minute fans and bought it. I thought I had made a good decision.
But as I drove away, I had the sinking feeling that I overspent by $20, and as a father of five, twenty bucks is a lot of Costco hot dogs! I had fan-buyer’s remorse!
I knew it would only take a few extra minutes to assemble the parts (as fan assembly is never the hard part of an install – it’s usually mounting the fan just right, hiding the wires in the canopy, dropping screws on the floor and looking for 10 minutes, and holding the heavy fan motor while connecting the wires). For a change of pace, I decided to head over to a neighboring big-box improvement store to see what they had. I quickly found a great fan for $80 as their fans were cheaper. I returned the other and took home the new fan and installed it in about an hour (it’s the Cedar Hill model from Harbor Breeze). After an entire morning of shopping & installing (9AM – 1PM), my fan quest was over. My daughter was happy and I felt good. But the endless choices in selecting a fan nearly stopped me cold. And I still question if I should have bought an even less pricey fan – say the $60 fan I saw first (I mean, will a teenager notice that a lesser fan twirls at 3700 CFM instead of 4300?)
I’ve always felt that too many choices is a bad thing. You need ample choices, but too many and it’s easy to waste time and question what you really need. In their report “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?,” researchers Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper present some interesting findings from studies they did around choice:
- Their 1st study showed that although more consumers were attracted to a tasting booth when the display included 24 flavors of jam rather than 6, consumers were subsequently much more likely to purchase jam if they had encountered the display of only 6 jams.
- In their 2nd study, students in an introductory college level course were more likely to write an essay for extra credit when they were provided a list of only 6, rather than 30, potential essay topics. In addition, students wrote higher quality essays if their essay topic had been picked from a smaller rather than a larger choice set.
- Their 3rd study demonstrated that people reported enjoying the process of choosing a chocolate more from a display of 30 than from a display of 6. However, despite their greater initial enjoyment in the extensive-display condition, participants proved more dissatisfied and regretful of the choices they made and were subsequently considerably less likely to choose chocolates rather than money as compensation for their participation.
The researches go onto say “Perhaps it is not that people are made unhappy by the decisions they make in the face of abundant options but that they are instead unsure–that they are burdened by the responsibility of distinguishing good from bad decisions.”
I think this data has ramifications for product designers, salespeople, customer service managers, and entrepreneurs. Seeing less makes us want to buy more, in many cases. And I think stores would sell more ceiling fans.
Do you agree with me? Anyone out there have a similar buying experience?
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In the senior in-home care industry, too many choices causes similar frustration for my clients and potential clients. A hospital might provide a list of 30 choices for companies that provide care for when they get discharged home, and the patient must decide if they want to pay for assistance, and if so, which of these companies to choose from.
Instead of making the choice in the short amount of time they have (maybe 2 days) with other stressful issues on their minds, many patients go home without help. Unfortunately, many times the patient, without help, gets hurt in the first few days of getting home. Without meaning to, the hospital employee has encouraged analysis paralysis and lowered the chance of safety in the home, exactly opposite of their intented outcome.
As a specific example, a patient’s daughter called us and was impressed by our company, but because we were one of her first calls, they felt the need to go through the list and call each company. She needed us to send assistance by 5pm, and she called at 2pm. Ten minutes to 5, I get another call from the lady stating after calling each company, she still wanted to use us. However, being almost three hours later, we weren’t able to send assistance until much later than she needed. Everything turned out ok, but the process took too long and delayed the purchase decision.
Consumer product companies like tropicana have created 10 different types of orange juice with the same simple-carton look. Their goal is to proliferate their brand in front of consumers so they first decide to use tropicana and then decide on low pulp, orange-pinapple, or calcium enrichment. What works for them and not other types of consumer products (like jam), is that the choices look homogenious and are therefore less confusing.