t’s not just big, life-altering purchases, either: In a recent Accenture survey of 19,000 consumers around the world, 74% of respondents said that they had abandoned an online shopping cart at least once in the past three months because they felt “bombarded by content, overwhelmed by choice and frustrated by the amount of effort they need to put in to making decisions.” This inability to commit to a purchase was reported by people shopping for clothes (79%), flights (72%), and even snacks (70%).
Yep, the choice overwhelm is exacerbated by the buzzword marketing attached to every online listing that makes you question what features you should expect or prioritize.
Many years ago for exactly these reasons, I discovered and now intentionally hold onto the “satisficer” approach in many life areas–a word that grates my nerves as a fan of language but is the opposite of the maximizer mindset.
The easier an etailer can make it for consumers to prioritize features and compare multiple products including specs and reviews, the easier it will be for shoppers to come to an efficient decision without regrets.
I also think part of the problem is choice overload. Having too many products that do many of the same things makes choosing hard. Then, we might fall into the satisficing as @papy so aptly described.
On the more recent front, I’ve been making some thought processes adjustments as well as adjustments in my consumption decisions. I am actually happier when I having fewer material possessions and don’t care about keeping up with everybody else. I have been slowly parsing through things and getting rid of things that I never thought I would. Visual reminders of folks who have crossed the river Styx are nice, but the best reminders of those we have loved are inside us.
Not having to have a house crammed full of stuff is easier on the wallet, psyche, and easier on the housekeeping
I imagine the solution to this will be an AI “personal shopper.” You would grant your AI personal shopper access to your online accounts, answer a handful of questions after it analyzes your buying habits, and use it anytime you shop online. It would sort through the thousands of choices available for a particular purchasing need and bring back, say, three for you to select from. You’re still doing the choosing, but only among the best options for you.
I started this thread because this is a real problem right now.
As a buyer, I am taking action to lessen the choices.
I am not buying any brands I do not know, I am not considering other than Prime listings on Amazon. I limit my Walmart.com shopping to what I can pickup in the store today.
I am buying more in person.
Opportunities for online sellers on marketplaces seem to be decreasing.
Does the Buy Box matter if the page is a third tier product no one has heard of?
Does promoting your listing matter when there are 50 or 100 sponsored listings?
When a product is in only a few FCs because it is low volume, will anyone buy it unless its search placement is high because of promotion?
AI cannot choose what the best choice is when there is zero reliable criteria for making a choice. With AI written listings, it is easy to fool AI selection.
In urban areas, maybe.
But in rural areas, online simply replaced catalog purchases and made it easier.
We would never be able to find all of the things we need if we relied on our local rural shops.
We would agree that one has to be cautious when buying items that are not really brand items; however, one also has to be cautious in today’s brick and mortar shops for the same reason.
We are not lazy enough to want AI to make our choices (yet). What is the fun in shopping if you’re not engaged enough to make the decision of what you want?
To be clear, what @SellerFeller mentioned was not AI choosing for a Buyer, but merely filtering options based on specific individualized criteria to narrow down and weed out unlikely options into a manageable amount of possibilities, from which the Buyer chooses.
It’s not much different than filtering search results on an individual platform or on an omnibus search (like Google Shopping) now, except possibly with more filter options and/or more relevant filter options. That is AI, already.
It’s different than a generative AI chatbot making recommendations based on >shrug<.
