Impact of Variety on Consumer Happiness: Marketing and the Tyranny of Freedom, The

Academy of Marketing Science Review, 2002

High-Variety Strategies and Consumer Happiness (generalization approach) We now look at how the high-variety strategies in marketing influence consumer happiness and SWB ([1] - [2]). The difference in the approach is that we look at a specific consumer and his/her consumption experiences, and try to work our way up to happiness. We now assume that people have some idea of what they want to acquire. For instance, a consumer sees a piece of advertisement and develops a liking for the product, which triggers him into some action. The action and reaction the consumer will go through is what we study now.

High-Variety Strategies in Marketing Barbara Kahn (1998) proposes that high-variety strategies in marketing can increase the competitiveness of firms by better-meeting customers' needs over time. The article presents an excellent overview of marketing strategies and their impacts. The author suggests that when firms adopt high-variety strategies, they fulfill two distinct goals. First, more variety makes it more likely for consumers to find exactly the option they were looking for (customization strategy). Further it allows consumers to enjoy variety over time (variety-seeking strategy). The basis for suggesting high-variety strategies is reasonable: firms need to develop long-term relationships with their customers, and instrumental in achieving that goal is learning customers' preferences and continually meeting their needs over time.

Kahn raises many of the important issues in establishing the role of marketing in the creation of overwhelming choice and unpleasant consumption experiences. She argues that the answer to the question how much variety to offer is empirical and is dependent on the nature of the competition and customer values in particular industries. From the firm's point of view, this seems like a satisfactory argument but from the standpoint of consumer happiness, factors seem to influence the level of desired variety. In agreement with previous sections, Kahn recognizes that high-variety can lead to frustration. She also seems to agree with Schwartz on the point that the amount of variety that can be processed or effectively considered is constrained by an upper bound.

An important factor influencing the role of marketing in creating consumer unhappiness with product proliferation is suggested in Kahn's discussion of perceived versus actual variety. Indeed, consumers recognize the level of variety differently depending on some factors. Kahn and Lehmann (1991) suggest that two elements contribute to perceived variety: the number of acceptable options and the amount of desirable diversity among items. Perceived variety is considered quite low if consumers see little or no differences among items in a product class. It has been proven that the decision-making task becomes arduous when consumers perceive that a line of item contains a lot of redundancy and duplication (Glazer, Kahn and Moore 1991). Kahn also suggests that "high" perceived variety is preferable to "low" when the consumer is motivated enough. (We understand being "motivated enough" to represent a state when people have dispositional attentional capacity, which may help produce variety-seeking behavior) Ways in which more variety-seeking behavior can be induced are reviewed. For instance, prompting positive mood in study participants increased their variety-seeking behavior by affecting their feelings of openness and flexibility (Kahn and Isen 1993). Further, similar results were obtained when congruent ambient scents were pumped into the consumption environment (Mitchell, Kahn and Knasko 1995).