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Chernev 2003 distinguishes 3 types of consumers - Consumer A already chose what she wants, and she just needs to find it out. - Consumer B knows her preference

Chernev 2003 distinguishes 3 types of consumers - Consumer A already chose what she wants, and she just needs to find it out. - Consumer B knows her preferences, but she needs to make the choice. - Consumer C is not aware of which attributes are important in the decision process. You are a consumer A, so this simplification did not help YOU. It did help consumers B and consumer C. http://www.hyperlabs.net/ergonomia/presentazioni/euroia11/ http://www.hyperlabs.net/ergonomia/presentazioni/euroia11/ the slides of my presentation at Euro IA 2011: Designing Interactions that Help Customers in Decision Making

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Did it help B and C? Or did it simply funnel B and C into buying a lot more computer than they needed?
- roc 11y ago
  It did when the alternative was the entire educational process behind knowing what they need, what tradeoffs are inherent, what the price should be, what vendors provide it at the acceptable price, what drawbacks come with those other vendors, living with those drawbacks, etc. Technical people like to pretend it's the easiest thing in the world to "know" how much computer someone needs and to buy it. But if you're non-technical, all you hear is technical people saying "trust me". Which is precisely the same thing Apple is saying. And, yes, we show them lower sticker prices. But Apple has a far better track record of delivering customer satisfaction than technical people recommending beige boxes. So, for anyone with the money, why in the world would they care for two seconds about "too much computer"? "Aww shucks. I bought too much computer and loved it, instead of listening to the geeks, getting just enough, and hating it."
- scott_karana 11y ago
  I'm sure that some of that is true, but part of B and C's problem is that they might underestimate their own needs, too. There's also a bit of Dunner-Kruger effect there. The difference between a $500 laptop and a $1000 laptop can be astounding. I suspect many purchasers of the cheaper laptop will regret it, where the purchasers of a $1000 laptop will have a more powerful, better built computer that might last them longer. (And in fact, with laptops at least, some cheaper laptops are "more powerful" because they're thicker and heavier; and the expense of the faster components further contributes to their poor build quality. Many more-expensive laptops put more money into thoughtful design, rather than "Spec competitions" and you get a slightly-slower, longer-lasting one. Compare cheap Android phones to flagship ones, for example. ------------------------- "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness." http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...
hammock 11y ago
How are we to read those slides on mobile if navigation requires a keyboard? (iPhone Safari here)
- sweetdreamerit 11y ago
  you are right :( it's not mobile friendly, sorry
bhauer 11y ago
Therein is the problem with all of these prescriptive theoreticians who say we would be happier with fewer choices. As someone who is routinely "Consumer A" in nearly all walks of life, I would find it inordinately frustrating and harmful for society to offer fewer—potentially no—choices. It would be stifling, and I think worse still, such a monoculture would encourage shunning of those who want something other than the singular option. I'm all for assisting Consumer C by way of tools like Consumer Reports, and modern evolutions of the same notion of helping fill information gaps. But I rail against the idea that choices should be eliminated to curtail the stress of Consumer C. No surprise: I am not an Apple consumer. In fact, I routinely write about how every technology company is not yet making the devices and technologies I want in my life (e.g., [1]). Choice is absolutely not hurting progress toward my ideal, though. Choice is, along with purchasing power and my (small) voice, among the few forces that allow me to exert a proportionate "steering" effect on the industry. Studying the purported satisfaction gap of Consumer C versus the free market and concluding—as the very title of the article does—that it is definitely "stressing us [all] out" rings of thinly-veiled authoritarianism. And that is bad. Luckily for me, for the time being, many manufacturers and vendors have elected to (mostly) ignore these researchers. For example, most of the US food industry continues to give me a broad spectrum of choices from everything from breakfast cereal, to iced tea, to ice cream. I hope their own market research has revealed the combined voices of Consumer A & B are too loud to suppress in an ill-advised effort to satisfy C. Help guide C, but don't assume A & B do not exist. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao
- sweetdreamerit 11y ago
  @bhauer, I agree. My point is: give the user the opportunity to decide how much effort to put in the process. In a digital environment, this means giving her millions of alternatives, but helping her to prune them based on some principles that derive from the cognitive sciences. For instance, the faceted navigation allows the consumer to eliminate the alternatives she is not interested in. This is the B consumer, who knows what is important for her (e.g. "a 256GB SSD and 16GB ram"). If you are the consumer C (and everybody of us is in such situation when we have to buy something and we are not expert at all) can be helped using the best sellers (see Amazon.com), the suggested for you, the ratings of other consumers, and so on. In a physical environment, however, you can not filter, and cutting the less selling products helps the majority of customers in the decision making effort, even if this means giving less choice.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Did it help B and C? Or did it simply funnel B and C into buying a lot more computer than they needed?

roc 11y ago
It did when the alternative was the entire educational process behind knowing what they need, what tradeoffs are inherent, what the price should be, what vendors provide it at the acceptable price, what drawbacks come with those other vendors, living with those drawbacks, etc. Technical people like to pretend it's the easiest thing in the world to "know" how much computer someone needs and to buy it. But if you're non-technical, all you hear is technical people saying "trust me". Which is precisely the same thing Apple is saying. And, yes, we show them lower sticker prices. But Apple has a far better track record of delivering customer satisfaction than technical people recommending beige boxes. So, for anyone with the money, why in the world would they care for two seconds about "too much computer"? "Aww shucks. I bought too much computer and loved it, instead of listening to the geeks, getting just enough, and hating it."
scott_karana 11y ago
I'm sure that some of that is true, but part of B and C's problem is that they might underestimate their own needs, too. There's also a bit of Dunner-Kruger effect there. The difference between a $500 laptop and a $1000 laptop can be astounding. I suspect many purchasers of the cheaper laptop will regret it, where the purchasers of a $1000 laptop will have a more powerful, better built computer that might last them longer. (And in fact, with laptops at least, some cheaper laptops are "more powerful" because they're thicker and heavier; and the expense of the faster components further contributes to their poor build quality. Many more-expensive laptops put more money into thoughtful design, rather than "Spec competitions" and you get a slightly-slower, longer-lasting one. Compare cheap Android phones to flagship ones, for example. ------------------------- "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness." http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-ri...

hammock 11y ago

How are we to read those slides on mobile if navigation requires a keyboard? (iPhone Safari here)

sweetdreamerit 11y ago
you are right :( it's not mobile friendly, sorry

bhauer 11y ago

Therein is the problem with all of these prescriptive theoreticians who say we would be happier with fewer choices. As someone who is routinely "Consumer A" in nearly all walks of life, I would find it inordinately frustrating and harmful for society to offer fewer—potentially no—choices. It would be stifling, and I think worse still, such a monoculture would encourage shunning of those who want something other than the singular option. I'm all for assisting Consumer C by way of tools like Consumer Reports, and modern evolutions of the same notion of helping fill information gaps. But I rail against the idea that choices should be eliminated to curtail the stress of Consumer C. No surprise: I am not an Apple consumer. In fact, I routinely write about how every technology company is not yet making the devices and technologies I want in my life (e.g., [1]). Choice is absolutely not hurting progress toward my ideal, though. Choice is, along with purchasing power and my (small) voice, among the few forces that allow me to exert a proportionate "steering" effect on the industry. Studying the purported satisfaction gap of Consumer C versus the free market and concluding—as the very title of the article does—that it is definitely "stressing us [all] out" rings of thinly-veiled authoritarianism. And that is bad. Luckily for me, for the time being, many manufacturers and vendors have elected to (mostly) ignore these researchers. For example, most of the US food industry continues to give me a broad spectrum of choices from everything from breakfast cereal, to iced tea, to ice cream. I hope their own market research has revealed the combined voices of Consumer A & B are too loud to suppress in an ill-advised effort to satisfy C. Help guide C, but don't assume A & B do not exist. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

sweetdreamerit 11y ago
@bhauer, I agree. My point is: give the user the opportunity to decide how much effort to put in the process. In a digital environment, this means giving her millions of alternatives, but helping her to prune them based on some principles that derive from the cognitive sciences. For instance, the faceted navigation allows the consumer to eliminate the alternatives she is not interested in. This is the B consumer, who knows what is important for her (e.g. "a 256GB SSD and 16GB ram"). If you are the consumer C (and everybody of us is in such situation when we have to buy something and we are not expert at all) can be helped using the best sellers (see Amazon.com), the suggested for you, the ratings of other consumers, and so on. In a physical environment, however, you can not filter, and cutting the less selling products helps the majority of customers in the decision making effort, even if this means giving less choice.