FAVORING THE FAMILIAR: OVERCHOICE LEADS TO CHOICE OF FAMILIAR OPTIONS

Abstract

We live in a world where consumers are constantly bombarded with myriad options to choose from. Marketers are incentivized to expand the depth of product lines, often rolling out iterations of products with incremental changes to empower consumers with more choice. Extant research has identified when large assortments can either benefit or hinder choice, focusing on downstream psychological consequences such as choice satisfaction, decision confidence and decision regret. My dissertation focuses on what consumers choose when faced with large assortments, by concentrating on the type of option selected (whether an option is familiar vs. novel). Through a mixture of lab experiments, real-behavior studies, and analysis of secondary data, I examine how the inherent difficulty in perusing large assortments lead consumers to “favor-thefamiliar” – selecting more familiar options within the assortment. I then evaluate how the effect influences consumers’ innovativeness perceptions toward the marketer, and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing strategies designed to attenuate this effect.