One of Each: Variety Seeking to Avoid Choice Difficulty

When consumers are faced with a choice conflict from information overload, they use heuristics and non-compensatory choice processes, such as elimination-by-aspects and conjuctive models, to reduce the consideration set and come to a choice (Broniarczyk 2008; Payne 1976; Payne, Bettman, and Johnson 1993). Yet in so many modern-day choice situations, consumers are able to choose multiple options. Moreover, decision difficulty seems to propel consumers to purchase more options (Goodman, Broniarzcyk, Griffin, and McAlister 2013). Consumers may seek variety as a way to minimize the conflict and difficulty associated with choice. Consumers seek variety due to actual or anticipated satiation (McAlister 1982), a desire to reduce preference uncertainty (Kahn and Lehman 1991), anticipated satiation (Simonson 1990). We propose that consumers possess and use a variety-seeking heuristic to relieve choice conflict and information overload, and provide evidence that variety seeking increases when consumers’ mental resources are taxed. We tested our hypotheses by both manipulating participant’s mental resources (via ego depletion) and measuring consumer’s decision-making processing tendencies (by measuring System 2 processing via a Cognitive Reflection Test). Depletion served as a unique test of our theory because it does not create conflict, per se, but rather reduces the resources available to deal with the existing conflict and difficulty. Three studies tested and found support for our hypotheses.