Abstract
Barry Schwartz defined the paradox of choice as the fact that in western developed societies a large amount of choice is commonly associated with welfare and freedom but too much choice causes the feeling of less happiness, less satisfaction and can even lead to paralysis. The paradox of choice has been recognized as one of the major sources of mass confusion in context of the B2C online mass customization. We propose to redefine the paradox of choice with an emphasis on the meaning of choice in conjunction with the amount of available options, rather than just the quantity of choice. We propose that it is the lack of meaningful choice, rather than an overwhelming amount of choice, that can cause customers’ feelings of decreased happiness, decreased satisfaction and paralysis. We further propose that since users themselves are often not able to explicitly define what constitutes a meaningful choice, the task they face belongs to the category of ill-defined problems. The challenge for mass customization practitioners is thus not to limit the scope of choice, as has been suggested in previous literature, but to provide users with choice that is relevant to them. We further discuss two computational approaches to solving problems related to the redefined paradox of choice in the context of the B2C mass customization. The first is based on recommender systems and the second is an implementation of artificial selection in genetic algorithms. We present findings of an empirical comparison of genetic algorithm and parametric product configurators. We find that the genetic algorithm tools, which allow users to move through a solution space by recognition of meaningful options rather than their definition, appear to be more popular among the users when it comes to browsing through solution spaces with larger number of dimensions.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Schwartz, B.: Paradox of Choice. HarperCollins Publishers, New York (2004a)
Schwartz, B.: Paradox of Choice – Discovery Expert Series interview by Furier, J. (2004 b), http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:WvWuU3APF30J:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=2000 (Accessed November 2009)
Von Neumann, J., Morgenstern, O.: Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour. Priceton University Press (1944)
Simon: A Behavioural Model of Rational Choice. Quaterly Journal of Economics 59, 99–118 (1955)
Rittel, H.W.J., Webber, M.M.: Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences 4, 155–169 (1973)
Maher, M.L., Poon, J.: Modelling Design Exploration as Co-Evolution. Computer Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering 11(3), 195–209 (1996)
Pine, J.B.: Mass Customization - The New Frontier in Business Competition. Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge (1993)
Schwartz, B.: Self-Determination. The Tyranny of Freedom (2000)
Berlyne, D.E.: Aesthetics and Psychobiology. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York (1971)
Keller, K.L., Staelin, R.: Effects of Quality and Quantity of Information on Decision Effectivness. The Journal of Consumer Research 14(2), 200–213 (1987)
Sauders, R., Gero, J.S.: Artificial Creativity: A Synthetic Approach to the Study of Creative Behaviour. In: Gero, J.S., Maher, M.L. (eds.) Computational and Cognitive Models of Creative Design V. Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, pp. 113–139. University of Sydney, Sydney (2001)
Holbrook, M.B., Gardner, M.P.: An Approach to Investigating The Emotional Determinants of Consumption Durations. Journal of Consumer Psychology 2(2), 123–142 (1993)
Toffler, A.: Future Shock. Bantam Books, New York (1970)
Davis, S.: Future Perfect. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1987)
Franke, N., Piller, F.: Value Creation by Toolkits for User Innovation and Design: The Case of the Watch Market. The Journal of Production Innovation Management 21(6), 401–415 (2004)
Piller, F., Schubert, P., Koch, M., Moslein, K.: Managing High Variety: How to Overcome the Mass Confusion Phenomenon of Customer. In: Deppery, D. (ed.) Proceedings of the EURAM 2003 Conference, Milan (2003)
Schreier, M.: The value increment of mass-customized products: An empirical assessment and conceptual analysis of its explanation. Journal of Consumer Behavior 5(4), 317–327 (2006)
Salvador, F., de Holan, P.M., Piller, F.: Cracking the Code of Mass Customization. MIT Sloan Management Review 50(3), 71–78 (2009)
Franke, N., von Hippel, E.: Satisfying Heterogeneous User Needs via Innovation Toolkits: The Case of Apache Security Software. Research Policy 32(7), 1149–1291 (2003)
Swait, J., Adamowicz, W.: The Influence of Task Complexity on Consumer Choice: A Latent Class Model of Decision Strategy Switching. Journal of Consumer Research 28(1), 135–148 (2001)
Piller, F., Schubert, P., Koch, M., Moslein, K.: Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10(4) article 8 (2005)
Teresko, J.: Mass Customization or Mass Confusion. Industry Week 243(12), 45–48 (1994)
Zipkin, P.: The Limits of Mass Customization. MIT Sloan Management Review 42(3), 81–88 (2001)
Felfernig, A., Friedrich, G., SchmidtThieme, L.: Guest Editors’ Introduction: Recommender Systems. IEEE Intelligent Systems 22(3), 18–21 (2007)
Piasecki, M., Hanna, S.: Review of B2C Online Product Configurators. In: MCPC. Fifth World Conference on Mass Customization and Personalization Proceedings, Helsinki, Finland (2009)
Schwartz, B.: Maximizing Versus Satisfacing: Happiness Is a Matter of Choice. J. of Personality and Social Psychology 83(5), 1178–1197 (2002)
Maes, P.: Agents that Reduce Work and Information Overload. Communications of the ACM 37(7), 30–40 (1994)
Schmidt-Thieme, L.: Compound Classification Models for Recommender Systems. In: Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, pp. 378–385 (2005)
Amazon (2010), www.amazon.com (Last accessed: January 2010)
Daily Perfect (2010), www.dailyperfect.com (Last accessed January 2010)
Last.fm (2010), www.last.fm/home (Last accessed: January 2010)
Holland, J.H.: Concerning Efficient Adaptative Systems. In: Yovits, M.C., Jacobi, G.T., Goldstein, G.D. (eds.) Self-Organising Systems, pp. 215–230. Spartan Books (1962)
Todd, S., Latham, W.: The Mutation and Growth of Art by Computers. In: Bentley, P.J. (ed.) Evolutionary Design by Computers, pp. 221–251. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco (1999)
Cho, S.B.: Towards Creative Evolutionary Systems with Interactive Genetic Algorithm. Applied Intelligence 16, 129–138 (2002)
Reas, C., Fry, B.: Processing – A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists. MIT Press, Cambridge (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Netherlands
About this paper
Cite this paper
Piasecki, M., Hanna, S. (2011). A Redefinition of the Paradox of Choice. In: Gero, J.S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition ’10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0510-4_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0510-4_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0509-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0510-4
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)