I’ve Decided: No More Information Please!
Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that once people have made a decision about a product, their satisfaction rates get higher the less information they have about the product.
——The team’s paper, “The Blissful Ignorance Effect,” shows that people who have only a little information about a product are happier with their purchases than people who have more information, the U of I reported. The paper will be published in an issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.
“We found that once people commit to buying or consuming something, there’s a kind of wishful thinking that happens and they want to like what they’ve bought,” Nayakankuppam said in a prepared statement. “The less you know about a product, the easier it is to engage in wishful thinking. The more information you have, the harder it is to kid yourself.”—-
To be honest, I sometimes feel this way before decisions too!
From the Des Moines Register.
2 Comments so far
I think this may also say something about the type of buyers they tested. Personally, I will not buy something until all my questions have been answered to my satisfaction.
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Patrick,
Without having read the research article, I am not sure that “wishful thinking” may be the main driver. I would posit that the real concern is that by having additional information about a product that has already been chosen, that this might force them to re-evaluate their choice.
The classic “choice theory” by William Glasser suggests that having too much choice actually makes things worse for us when deciding what to purchase. To make matters worse, after we have actually made the purchase, we then question or berate ourselves if we find further information that challenges the reasons for the purchase.
Regards,
Brad
Posted on February 08, 2008 at 12:32 PM | Comment permalink