I thought this podcast with Barry Schwartz was not only witty and blunt but also very true on so many levels. The choice of paradox is something all people can relate to, especially Americans with the number of options/choices we have EVERYWHERE today. Just something as simple as trying to pick out paper towels at a grocery store can turn into quite the fiasco with this product taking over almost a whole aisle. Barry Schwartz made some interesting points when he describes the two negative effects choice has on people. The first is with so many options it makes it difficult to choose at all. My dad, for example, was stressed out just trying to upgrade his phone. He is the most basic human being and wanted the most basic cell phone, however those no longer exists, and this was hard for him to understand. AT&T stores now carry over 120 different models of cell phones. So while my mother, the AT&T sales representative, and I tried to find him the most simple phone in the store, he was completely content with no upgrade at all and chose to stay with his 4 year old Nokia phone. The second negative effect is that when we do finally choose out of the hundreds of options available, we end up less satisfied with our choice, even if it’s a great decision. I think anyone and everyone can relate to this effect, even children. For example, when kids are in Toys R Us and their parents tell them they can choose one toy, they will run through the store trying to find that perfect toy. It is only fifteen minutes later when they are buckled up in their car seat in the back of the minivan that they are pouting to their parents about how they now want the remote control car, not the army action figure. However, if the parents simply went to Toys R Us without the child and brought home the remote control car as a surprise, the child would be ecstatic! Adults can certainly relate to this negative effect when in a grocery store, a car dealership, a restaurant, a department store, or even Home Depot. We used to be able to order coffee only two ways: regular and decaf. Starbucks has completely changed this for us and while we may think we’re more satisfied after having our non-fat vanilla sugar-free no whip iced latte, are we really? I mean it took me 10 minutes to figure out what I wanted and then once I did receive it, I’m disappointed that I had decided on vanilla and not hazlenut. As Barry Schwartz perfectly said, “the more options, the less satisfaction.”
Another interesting point I thought he made was when there are more options available, our expectations go up. The jean example he mentioned is perfect for this. So now that we must decide between different styles, colors, & brands to choose from with jeans the one that we do choose must be exceptional. However, if we only had 3 choices when buying jeans, we would probably be just as satisfied even if they were not as great but because of our expectations everything is skewed. Adding more options produces less satisfaction with our results even when they’re good results. In the movie, Juno when Jennifer Garner is trying to decide on which color to paint the baby’s nursery and the two yellows are almost identical so the husband says the child is not going to be angry at you for choosing custard yellow over banana yellow. This perfectly shows how many options are out there for consumers and in the end we are still contemplating if we decided on the right one, even if it was a great choice.
In the end, Schwartz says the ultimate secret to happiness is low expectations. This seems very true after everthing he says in his podcasts and after thinking about consumers in general however I can’t help but feel a little depressed when I hear that. My whole life I’ve heard, set your goals high, you can do anything you want, you can change the world, … but then with a statement like that it all just kind of falls apart. So while as a consumer this may be the case, we should realize our increasing expectations with the increasing number of options, but as a person in general I do not think I should ever settle or lower my expectations. While I may be a happier person for a short period of time, I am willing to take the risk of failure if it gets be somewhere even better in the end.
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