Executive Summary
Imagine starting your first job and being able to afford the (used) car of your dreams. One of the authors of this article found herself in such a situation a few years ago and started searching dealerships to find her ideal car. She would have been delighted had she found a match for her preferences in the small college town where she lived. However, not having much success finding her desired car locally, she began searching the Internet for suitable options. Certainly, she thought, the Internet’s nearly infinite reach would allow her to find not only her preferred model but also the right color, interior, and engine. However, even given the Internet’s scope, she found only two cars that matched her two most important criteria. Although she happily bought one of them, she could not help but feel a little disappointed that, given the large assortment available online, she did not find an even closer match to her preferences.
Today, many retailers, particularly online, position themselves in terms of their assortment size, priding themselves as offering the largest selection in a particular category. This article suggests that highlighting the assumed relationship between a large assortment and consumers’ expectations about being able to match their preferences may have substantial downsides. As the opening anecdote suggests, the authors posit that as assortment size increases, so do consumers’ expectations about being able to find a close preference match in the set. Although consumers may indeed find a better preference match from larger assortments, they may overestimate the extent to which they are able to choose more advantageously. Subsequently, when consumers choose a product that falls short of their expectations, they feel greater disappointment when the product came from a larger as opposed to a smaller set. In addition, even when consumers find a better-than-expected preference match, they experience less delight when choosing from a larger as opposed to a smaller set. In either case, because assortments of different sizes create different levels of expectations, the same item will generate lower satisfaction when it was drawn from a larger as opposed to a smaller assortment.
Recently, other researchers have demonstrated that large assortments may lead to negative outcomes. For example, large assortments may leave consumers feeling overloaded or may cause them to anticipate regretting any potential decision, often leading consumers to avoid making a decision all together. However, this article shows that even when consumers actually make a choice and without anticipating regret or feeling overwhelmed, larger assortments may still have substantial negative consequences. Although larger assortments can certainly overwhelm people, the authors show that the proposed expectations-based mechanism operates over and above the effects of overload.
As such the authors’ framework makes unique recommendations for marketing practice. When consumers feel overwhelmed, limiting the information provided or focusing consumers on dimensions that are easily comparable may reduce overload or regret. However, findings from this article suggest that such actions may not eliminate all damaging consequences of larger assortments. Instead, these findings suggest that marketers need to carefully consider whether and how they evoke expectations without breeding disappointment. It may be risky to emphasize to consumers that they have thousands of products to choose from, as many retailers do. Such an approach can raise expectations even further than they might be raised by merely experiencing the assortment, thus potentially exacerbating disappointment. Instead of highlighting the absolute size of their assortment, marketers may instead want to highlight their market coverage. As such, instead of suggesting to consumers that a large assortment will provide them with a perfect match, retailers could assure consumers that they have access to everything the market offers. Such an approach may manage expectations and also reduce anticipated regret of missing out on options consumers may imagine being available elsewhere.
Biography
Kristin Diehl is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California. She received a PhD in Marketing from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and the degree of Diplom-Kauffrau from Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Germany. Today’s consumers have access to large choice sets, but the question remains whether and how people actually benefit from these large selections. Kristin’s research identifies systematic principles that help explain when consumers benefit from larger assortments and when they do not. In particular, her work investigates the role of ordering tools and assortment organization in the context of large assortments and examines search processes as key determinants of consumers’ outcomes. Her work has been published in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.
Cait Poynor is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. She has her PhD in Marketing and her MBA from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Cait’s research examines the effects of ways in which consumers and retailers divide the world, ranging from organization of large assortments to categories of items created to regulate their own behavior. Her research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 2, April 2010
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