Researchers have investigated (abstract) the degree to which consumers perceive themselves to be knowledgeable about a product and how that influences the likelihood that they will buy a particular product. The study confirmed "choice overload" - feeling so overwhelmed that you end up unhappy with a decision or even fail to make a decision - as expected, however with an important caveat; Consumers with low subjective knowledge are more likely to purchase products from large selections only when the product information is easily understandable.
So, for example, participants with low subjective knowledge preferred having more options when they were asked to choose a bottle of wine but only when the options included helpful information such as notes about the flavor or grape varietal for each wine. They did not prefer having more options when the information provided was less useful, such as the name of the winery.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday July 27 2014, @07:39PM
Funny this research came up now, because it's sort of Amazon's problem with their 600k slush pile of mostly low-quality fiction. You can have too much choice, and be overwhelmed. There may be a few diamonds in the mud of Amazon's slush pile, but you have to wallow in the mud a long time to maybe find one. Is it worth $120/year to root your snout through this slush pile in the hopes of finding a diamond? Love them or hate them, the major publishers know how to pick something and emphasize it to readers, to differentiate it from the rest of the stuff. Amazon has not learned how to do that yet. They treat e-books strictly as fungible commodities to be sold as cheaply as possible in mass quantities, and that isn't an appealing thing for readers. It's like an all-you-can-eat pig trough. Yuck.
On the other side, did you see that only 6 corporations control almost the entire copyright industry now?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/business/a-21st-century-fox-time-warner-merger-would-narrow-already-dwindling-competition.html [nytimes.com]
We also have less choice than ever. At a time when the Internet allows anyone to publish anything, a few corporations are controlling what people "consume" - even the word "consume" is used, like all media products are consumed like we consume 99-cent hamburgers or toilet paper. A few corporations have a choke hold on popular culture, news, and entertainment. The odds of seeing anything new or original are almost zero.
Sure, there are options, such as you can be a radical like me and not "consume" pop culture at all...
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday July 27 2014, @09:22PM
Lots of things on the market these days have minimal differences making choices simultaneously harder and less critical. Even if you get it wrong, you will usually come out ok.
Shopping wine, its really hard to go wrong these days if you simply know vaguely what you like. There are very few totally crappy wines on the market in any wine store, or even supermarket wine sections.
In the past week I had to make choices on paint, caulk, vehicle front cams, and assorted groceries. All of the choices were made on a minimum amount of detailed product knowledge, by just reading the labels. But in every case there were multiple choices that met all my criteria. Every once in a while I find myself obsessing over a choice of several $16 products and simply resolve to pick by whim.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by clone141166 on Monday July 28 2014, @12:05AM
Interesting research but really who gives a feck. So you had more choice, bought a product and now you feel like maybe you should have picked the "better" option.
The truth is you are still better off having had more choices and picking a product you are slightly unhappy with, than having limited choice and ending up with an inferior product that you are "happy" with just because the only other choice has been proven to be just as terrible.
This kind of research is fine in the context of "just research", but if it's used to justify a reduction in choice; that's horrifying to me. It's like some kind of twisted attempt to define the growing lack of competition and variation in many industries as somehow being better, which it most certainly is not.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Monday July 28 2014, @04:25AM
I think people in the Linux community should "give a feck" because the study that found "Consumers with low subjective knowledge are more likely to purchase products from large selections only when the product information is easily understandable" means people will not switch to Linux from Windows. Before you reply that Linux is free, I'll answer that by saying that every version of Linux is not free for most people: it cost a hell of a lot of time.
I'm a Windows guy and a few months ago, I started dabbling in the Linux world a lot more. Know what I did? I threw my hands up in the air and said, "Gee, most people say Linux Mint is the best so I guess I'll go with that." And you know what happened after that? I still had to try three different versions of Linux Mint because there were no good write ups what the differences were -- none that matched the list I was looking for, at least. That took a lot of time to figure out which one I liked best. Now, I understand why the Linux Mint guys offered three options and I think it's great they did. I'm also not blaming them for not talking about what I was looking for in an operating system. What I wanted was complicated and operating systems are not simple. I'm simply saying I fell victim to what this research was talking about and I had already made up my mind to use Linux. This is a huge thing for trying to convert the layman to Linux.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Wootery on Monday July 28 2014, @12:00PM
A sort of tragedy of the commons, then? You're saying that although each distro is created to better serve its creators, the fact that there are so damn many of them (even ignoring 'sub-distros', as you say) is itself very harmful to all the distros.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Monday July 28 2014, @12:45PM
No, although it can seem that way and it isn't too far from what I was trying to say. It is the idea that there is no easy way to discern the differences between the all the distros -- even for people who spend their entire day eyeball deep in the computer world -- and even for those who have already decided they are going to use Linux and have some (but not deep) experience with Linux. This lack of easy-to-see information between the distros combined with the sheer number of them is (in my opinion) harmful to all distros.
I chose Linux Mint because I've been hanging out on Soylent News, and before that Slashdot. I (sort of) had an idea of what kind of distro I wanted before jumping in because of what I had read about Linux for the past several years prior. If I hadn't already been keeping an eye on Linux through news stories, I probably would have never played with Linux at all... and I've written simple bash shell scripts off and on for 20 years and can wield the command line without fear. I don't have unlimited time, though. (Quite the opposite. Looking for a job and learning to speak a foreign language fluently eats up a hell of a lot of time.) There are other distros out there that seem interesting but I'll never try them out because I don't have the time. For all I know, one of those could have been a better fit, but I'll never know.
(Score: 1) by Wootery on Monday July 28 2014, @06:19PM
I think I get you now: there's no decent source on Which distro is right for me?.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by etherscythe on Monday July 28 2014, @11:30PM
An interesting take on this in a Ted Talk [ted.com].
TLDW: many people see choices in very different ways. The trick is in defining smart choices, such that the differences are significant, palpable, and unambiguous.
I've personally found that (where I do not have particular expertise) there are often easy choices, and right choices, with very little overlap. Distinguishing between them requires methodical analysis and patience. While not so important on everyday decisions like what drink should I buy with lunch, on the other hand it's like they say: "it's amazing the things you can do without, provided you have the little luxuries." In that sense, being pleased with your everyday choices is a kind of luxury. Being forced to choose between an endless series of equally terrible choices sounds like hell to me; if having no alternatives means someone gets the motivations to create a meaningful choice for everyone, I might be in favor of reducing choice. I think that may be part of how Google Fiber came to be, for example.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @07:49AM
When people are given subjective information when they have no opinion on it, they do not ask for more choices. That could be interpreted as people that only get useless information do not want more useless information.
Suddenly the study does not seem so interesting.
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Monday July 28 2014, @12:28PM
Most things seem obvious once they have been pointed out.