CAN CONSUMERS HAVE TOO MANY CHOICES?
CAN CONSUMERS HAVE TOO MANY CHOICES? It is surprising to me to see the articles and new books which argue that having too many choices can be harmful to consumers. It is not that the consumer may choose tobacco or another harmful good. It is the burden of having to choose itself that is supposed to be harmful. It is surprising because economists have typically assumed that having an additional option would necessarily improve the lot of the consumer. I have never heard anybody complain about a restaurant menu that was too large. Nevertheless, I do bump against the effort to limit choices. The example I think of is my fancy car radio that will not let me listen to a station with imperfect reception and therefore safeguards me from listening to important local stations like WINS, (which claims to be the most listened to station in the New York area). I am thinking of this in connection with my post of yesterday about the fantasy baseball league. The stat service we have used for many years has been revised to limit the options available and now rejects our rather simple format. I tried Yahoo, but it has a maximum limit of 1250 innings for pitchers for a year (you can choose a range of lower ceilings). With nine pitchers, that would meant that you couldn’t have as many as five starters. CBS had a good site, but it had a maximum of 23 players. ESPN doesn’t permit the use of runs produced as a category (even though it does permit categories like pitches per plate appearance for batters and pitch count and pickoffs for pitchers). Maybe some of these limitations could be overcome by somebody more accomplished with computers, but deep down I think it’s because of the desire to limit choice. Why should somebody want to have a virtual pitching staff with five starting pitchers?
Personally, I LOVE a staggering amount of choice when it comes to consumer goods, like at the grocery store. Mr. Burt made a long digression in AP US History to rant about how privileged we are to have a whole aisle full of different kinds of bread. He announced what a great country this is. I agree. The choice is a good thing, not something harmful. If I have to choose only one box of cereal from all the 55 varieties in the cereal aisle, not a problem; I can buy Wheaties one week and then Honey Nut Cheerios the next time I run out of cereal. It’s pleasant to have variety.
(However, I have read in diet articles that having more variety in food encourages you to eat more. If you want to discourage your appetite, limit your options. If you want to encourage yourself to eat vegetables, put a variety on your plate.)
The time that too much choice does stress me out is when I have activities or social engagements that overlap, especially if it’s something like two friends’ weddings in the same weekend. I was afraid that would happen with Catherine and Tanya’s weddings this September, but fortunately they’ve picked different weekends.