The issue of whether too much choice is bad for us cropped up a lot during the Noughties, all the way from jokes on Top Gear about how many choices you now have to make just to get a cup of coffee in Starbuck’s to Barry Schwartz’s book, The Paradox of Choice, published in 2004.
But the topic has been around a lot longer than that: famously, in the 1984 film, Moscow On The Hudson, Robbie Williams’s Russian immigrant enters an American supermarket for the first time – and the profusion of goods and brands on offer makes him faint.
Now comes yet another contribution to the argument in the form of a paper, “Does Choice Mean Freedom And Well Being” by Professor Hazel Rose Markus of Stanford University’s Psychology Department, to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
There seem to be three main conclusions:
•Poorer Westerners and non-Westerners don’t think choice is that important
•Choice may mean something different to non-Westerners
•Unlimited choice can make you miserable and/or selfish
Well, it’s fairly obvious that the working classes have less power to choose than people up the social scale: less money, less choice.
As for choice meaning something different to non-Westerners – yes, quite possibly. Many non-Westerners can’t even choose their government, the state tends to make a lot of decisions for you, and when your main concern is being able to feed your family that week, you don’t have to worry too much about whether to go for a latte or a cappuccino.
The third point – choice can make you miserable and/or selfish – is more interesting. On the surface this looks like a dodge by the liberal left to revisit the laissez-faire Regan/Thatcher capitalist era in order to win the argument retrospectively: see – we told you all this damned economic freedom was bad for you, but you wouldn’t listen!
But even allowing for propaganda, choice can be depressing.
Being able to choose means being able to make bad choices, and that’s a rich potential source of angst – especially when you discover that your friends or neighbours have got a better deal on a car, or a cheaper mortgage, or have sent their children to a better school, or just got their kitchen extension done for half the price – and to a better standard – than you managed. Mind you, it’s better than only being able to buy the state-produced 500cc 2-seater Splodz, or not being able to afford a kitchen extension, or not needing a mortgage because you can’t afford to get on the property ladder, or not having to worry about choosing a school because your son could only get into the local one that wouldn’t be out of place on The Wire.
I guess it’s down to us all to learn to be satisfied with ”good enough” rather than spending our time chasing the mirage of perfection. To be honest, I feel I’m ahead of the game if my choices turn out not to be utterly disastrous.
The internet is, of course, a help and a hindrance. I just got £300 knocked off my car insurance by using a price comparison website. This was oddly satisfying, but I could have earned more by working rather than wasting hours on the web making sure I’d got the very best deal available. Silly, really.
The real question is, why, when it comes to so many of the things we have to make decisions about – cars, mortgages, utility packages, ISP, home insurance, investment “vehicles”, car insurance, holidays – is the choice of providers and the number of separate deals on offer so ludicrously vast.
Well, we’ve all got to earn a crust, and a free market means you can’t stop new players entering the field. The internet, of course, has caused an explosion of choice – and a welter of services offering us ways of tip-toeing through the resulting minefield of alternatives.
But the real cause lies elsewhere.
Car companies, financial institutions, insurance companies – you name it - are obsessed by the new: they’re convinced there’s no better way of keeping ahead of the game than by offering new products to new customers. Why have a small basic range of mortgages on offer, when you can have a hundred, all aimed at one specific segment of the market? Why offer three differently-specced versions of a new model car, when you can offer dozens of pernickety choices? Why bother treating loyal customers well, when you can offer special deals to entice shiny new ones on board?
Of course, it doesn’t actually make any sense: it costs a lot more to sign a new customer than it does to retain loyal customers by treating them well. Bombarding potential car buyers with too many choices will cause many to retreat in confusion – a lot more than will spend money with you because you have a car on offer which boasts every tiny feature they’d been looking for.
Companies reward employees for creating new products. Bonuses, salary increases – whole careers – depend on this culture of endless novelty. Looking after existing customers isn’t glamorous, and isn’t going to advance your career as an executive. That’s why you can choose from hundreds – thousands – of different PCs. And why, when the wrong one’s delivered, or it doesn’t work, you end up talking to a nice Indian lady who isn’t empowered to solve your problem. You see, the new model has been produced, a new customer has bought it, the executive has been rewarded – what could be better?
I bought a number of computers for my office some years back. One of the screens they supplied was wrong (it was about the size of a baby elephant, but not as cute) . Trying to get this monstrosity replaced ultimately defeated me – we got a new one from a store. As a result, when the time came to update our equipment, I switched to Macs. More expensive, but there were no delivery problems, and the range of Macs on offer is extremely limited, so making a choice is dead simple.
Apple’s business seems to be geared towards making choice ease, and to keeping existing customers happy – I know I am. Ergo, I assume that mindlessly churning out new products that will just confuse potential customers isn’t handsomely rewarded with fancy titles and seats on the board.
Now, if we could just get every other supplier we deal with to follow suit, we might end up living in a world of meaningful, stress-free choices.
What could be better?
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