Paradox of Choice

Westernized societies that we live in today firmly believe that the best way to satiate their audience is to provide them with a plethora of choices. This would enable a person to conveniently find a best fit and would make life easier.

However, a recent study that was conducted to understand consumer behavior indicates otherwise:

In this study, Twenty Four flavors of jams were placed in one supermarket and six flavors of jams were placed in another super market. Almost the same number of people were invited to these stores to buy these jams.

It was observed that 30 percent of people bought jams from the supermarket where they had 6 jams to choose from against 3 percent of those who had to choose from 24 different flavors of jams. Evidently, the people who tasted close of two dozen different flavors got so confused that they chose to buy nothing at all. This is the first short coming of having too many choices – Paralysis to make one.

Choices that are supposed to make our decision-making easy, in a twisted way render us choice less. This brings us to a million dollar question: ‘Is having so many choices always such a good news’? Continue reading “Paradox of Choice”