A632.2.3.RB - Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier

Sheena Iyengar provided great insight on the opportunity, or diminishment of opportunity with an influx of choices. Sheena Iyengar recommends 4 techniques that can help improve the experience of choosing, she recommends cutting, concretization, categorization, condition for complexity (Iyengar, 2011).

Interestingly in my own personal experience I find myself having a better choice experience at my favorite grocer, Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s, very similar to its sister company Aldi’s, also has a comparatively small range of choices to make for every product. Admittedly, the lack of choice is what brings me to Trader Joe’s on a regular basis, I know they have one type of pizza sauce, and that is the one I buy. Because of the limitation of choice, I know that I can trust the Trader Joe’s line, because it has to be a good product, if not they loose business on that entire product offering and it diminishes their product line reputation. Comparatively, cutting choices is important in my own line of work, an example would be my launch of a social hearsay program to the sales team. Instead of providing the sales team with the vast choice of social media platforms to interact with I only encourage them to use LinkedIn. Knowing that the sales team does not have social media on the top of their priority list, and that if I provided too many options there wouldn’t be any engagement at all, I find this cutting down of options to be effective.

Categorization is another choice limitation that I appreciate as a consumer. I am an avid online shopper, and because of this I know how I prefer to do my online shopping. I find that categorization is immensely important to me, I prefer online vendors that categorize their products so I don’t have to waste my time browsing through a long list of products. Comparatively, as a member of my organization categorization is critical when functioning internally as an organization. I would make the claim that having organization charts, though they may encourage bureaucracy, they provide a simpler way to navigate within a cross functional organizational capacity.

As discussed in our text, there are a number of factors and systems that can effect a decision making process(Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001). Just as technologically supported patterns and models can impact a decision making process, so can human placed patterns or limitations such as discussed by Sheena Iyengar and her mention of cutting and categorizing (Iyengar, 2011).

References

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. E. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Iyengar, S. (2011). "How to make choosing easier". Retrieved January 20, 2019, from https://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose