The Subjective State Consequences Of Choice Overload In The Framework Of Experienced Utility

Under the background of increasingly fierce market competition,products are constantly subdivided,and product categories are greatly increased.Although it satisfies consumers’ demand for products,the decision-making difficulty also increases.It seems that every consumer may encounter difficulties in various consumption scenarios.Based on this,scholars put forward and developed the concept of choice overload.It is widely recognized that choice overload is manifested in objective choice behavior and subjective state consequences.Past studies on the choice overload consequences mostly focus on objective choice behavior,but when the degree of choice overload is not enough to influence consumer choice,it may draw wrong conclusions about whether consumers experience choice overload.Therefore,it is necessary to construct a systematic scale for the measurement of subjective state,so as to effectively supplement the measurement of choice overload.In connection with the concept of experienced utility proposed in behavioral economics,this paper summarizes the scale of subjective state of choice overload,and incorporates the subjective state consequences into the framework of experienced utility,and measures the subjective state consequences by measuring the method of memory utility.At the same time,in order to reduce the impact of peak-end rule on mnemonic method,decision making process is divided into several stages according to the decision process theory and corresponding to different variables of the scale,so as to observe the subjective state consequence of choice overload in more specific stages and improve the accuracy of measurement.Finally,248 sample data were collected in the form of questionnaire survey through the method of choice experiment.Principal component analysis,paired sample t test and cluster analysis were used to test the changes of subjective state reported by different types of consumers before and after the manipulation.Among the findings: 1.Same as the expansion of the choice set,keeping the size of the choice set unchanged and increasing the number of describing product attributes will also increase the perceived difficulty of choice,and generate negative emotions and other subjective state consequence.Increasing both the size of the choice set and the number of attributes has a more obvious impact on consumers and more negative emotions changes.2.Choice overload mainly appears in the product perception and option evaluation stage which requires more cognitive resources.Once the decision is made,the choice overload is less obvious.3.Information nudge can help consumers make decisions and reduce the choice overload,considering different types of consumers,the maximizers are more susceptible to the influence of information nudge.The study of this paper provides a systematic scale and method for the measurement of subjective state consequence of choice overload,and makes an effective supplement for the accurate measurement of it.Meanwhile,the introduction of experienced utility framework enriches the economic interpretation of choice overload.