The Art of Choosing - A Book Review

I picked up this book called "The Art of Choosing" by Sheena Iyenger hoping to get greater insight into the minds of the consumers I much yearn to address as a marketeer. I wanted to understand if I could influence the choices of buyers. Well, the book has gone far more deeper than just about the choice of a consumer & dealt with the entire psychology of every choice that we make in life. It has brought forward the fact that much as we think that choices are made by us, we also are eventually made by them. What we choose to accept eventually turns around and shapes our lives and that choice is influenced by factors like culture, society, multitude of choices etc.


I had read about the collectivist and the individualistic society while pursuing my masters in business & never thought it has such a big influence in how we shape our lives. As the author talks about experiments that were conducted between individuals of both collectivist societies like Asians and individualists like Americans it is clear how even small choices like choosing a candy bar can be influenced by the society we belong to. A child as young as 3 years from the American society doesn't seek out for his mother's choice as much as an Asian child does when he chooses which game to play from a multitude of choices. This demonstrates how much we seek for approval from our parents & loved ones once we belong to a collectivist society. Whereas in an individualist society every person seeks to make his own choice, which in a way displays his character or personality and in getting the freedom from influences of his society each individual seeks to be unique rather than belonging to a set in his society. However, the author does share results of her experiments where even Americans in some cases do not want to stand apart distinctively, even when they are individualist in nature. Thus, leaving a hope for corporates or marketeers that segmentation for infleuncing can be created even in such kind of societies.

Most of us have heard about the "Jam experiment" where buyers in a shopping mall are exposed to jams of multitude numbers in sets of 2. The first set are a choice of 6 jams and the second a choice of 24 flavors of jams. Sheena Ieynger the conductor of this experiment was trying to ascertain how much choice is favorable to make a sale for any consumer product. Interestingly, even though more number of consumers got attracted towards the second set the number of converters i.e. actual purchasers of jams was from people who were exposed to set 1. Even though the exposure of set 2 was higher the number of purchases for set 1 was much higher. This meant that consumers are able to conclude or make a purchasing decision much faster and much more easily when they have limited choices. In fact, a researcher has been quoted in "The Art of Choosing" as having theorized in his paper about the limit of choices which humans can handle. George Miller in his 1956 paper talked about a magic number 7 and observed a relationship between the number and the amount of information each of us can process at any given time. Hence, brands which create too many options among their products thinking they will increase their sales are actually creating higher deterrents for achieving their sales targets.

Even when we think we will be happier with more choices there are certain situations when we do not wish to make a choice at all. Which are those situations? I think I shouldn't reveal the whole book in such a short summary of this manner. So to know about those few times when you would wish that someone else made a choice go ahead and read the engrossing book "The Art of Choosing".