1,547 Shoes…the complexity of choice

Let’s say you want to buy something, perhaps a new pair of dress shoes for a friend’s wedding this weekend. You don’t know exactly what you want, however you know that you don’t want to go through the hassle of buying shoes at the mall. You’ve heard of Zappos from a friend, and trust their good recommendation. Because Zappos sells more than just shoes, the process is a little more complex, but you hear they have lots of options, and since you don’t know exactly what you want, you think the options will help in your decision making process. So, you’ve picked a website to buy your shoes from, easy enough right? Well, let’s go through the steps to locate the perfect dress shoe:

1. Let’s assume you are male-click on Men’s
2. You are looking for shoes-click on Shoes
3. Because you have a life other than shoe searching, Zappos has kindly divided the 9, 935 results for Men’s shoes into 5 categories (Subcategory, Color, Brand, Size, and Width)
4. 5 categories-simple enough right? You tell me. There are 7 options within Subcategories, 29 Color options, 280 Brand options, 32 Size options, and 17 Width options, for a grand total of 365 options. Seems like Zappos in fact does think all you do is search for shoes.
5. Because you know you want dress shoes, go ahead and click oxfords in the Subcategory section-this narrows your choices down to 1,547.

1,547 shoes to choose from. Quite an overwhelming number, considering your search was narrowed down to just one website. While some may argue that this abundance of choice is beneficial, I choose to side with the opposition. To quote Barry Schwartz, noted psychologist and author of 2004’s The Paradox of Choice, the “effect of too much choice is paralysis, rather than liberation.” Schwartz highlights the popular misconception that the way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. In reality however, this maximization of choice cripples the consumer, as people find it hard to make any choice at all with such an abundance of options. He contends that, “even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from.” When we think about this notion with our example, it is rather easy to comprehend. With so many shoes to choose from, if you buy one and it's not perfect (and what shoe is truly perfect?), it’s easy to imagine that you could have made a different choice that would have been better. Thus, those black wingtip laceups which you thought were great when you bought them aren’t so great anymore, because you could have bought cap toe’s, or you could have bought a different brand of shoe altogether. Schwartz terms this as the “imagined alternative”, which prompts you to regret the decision you made, and this regret subtracts from the satisfaction of your decision, even if those black wingtip laceups were truly the best decision after all.

Our multitude of choices not only immobilizes our decision-making capabilities, they also contribute to self-blame. In the past, when only one type of dress shoe was available to purchase, any imperfection the shoe had was not our fault; rather it was the world’s fault, as there were no other options. However, in today’s modern society with countless types of dress shoes available, any imperfection the shoe may have is your fault. You could have done better with 1,547 shoes to choose from, there is no excuse not to have a perfect shoe. And this alarming thought not only applies to the search for shoes, it extends into consequential life decisions that consume our minds on a day-to-day basis. Like Schwartz says, “There is no question that some choice is better than none, but it doesn’t follow that more choice is better than some choice."