Trends in Ecommerce

Being Japan’s largest online shopping mall, Rakuten entered the Singapore market this year, aiming to provide an extensive array of products to cater to all consumers. Recent findings suggest that having more choices may not necessarily be beneficial to consumers. Besides that, consumers’ decision-making processes now include the consequences of the choices they make. Different consumers have their unique way of processing information, thus it is essential for us to make relevant changes to cater to them.

First of all, having more choices may not enable them to make better decisions as it will be overwhelming for consumers. Research from Lussier and Olshavsky (as cited in Babutsidze, 2012) shows the selection process of consumers where they sieve through descriptive information available from all the goods, before choosing one out of the several brands selected. This is a complicated process and will be more challenging if additional choices are made available to them. An experiment conducted in a California grocery store affirms that while more consumers were attracted by the display of 24 jams, only 3% went on to purchase a pot, compared to the 30% who purchased a pot of jam when faced with just 6 different selections (“Tyranny of Choice”, 2010). This suggests that a smaller group of consumers managed to make a selection from the wide array of alternatives provided, implying that more choices confuse consumers rather than benefit them. Another example Iyengar (2012) cited was “when Proctor & Gamble went from 26 different kinds of Head & Shoulders to 15, they saw an increase in sales by 10 percent” (para.8). Thus, to aid consumers in their decision-making, we should have a stringent process on the quality of products we offer, instead of increasing the range of them. We can also come up with products with distinct differences to ease the selection process, so that the appropriate choices are more noticeable to our consumers.

Consumers are mindful when choosing their desired products, as they constantly feel the need to make the perfect choice. Tyranny of Choice (2010, para.27) states that, “having options seems to make people think they can have control over outcomes”, and while Dietrich (2010) verifies that “present decisions influence future decision making” (p.1), consumers are more accountable for the alternatives they choose due to the array of choices available, as they will affect subsequent decisions. Therefore, it can be derived that “people use external information about products in order to reduce the uncertainty about the outcomes” (Jacoby et al. as cited in Babutsidze, 2012, para.16), which may include customers’ reviews and feedback. Also, Iyengar (2012) responds “in order for people to understand the differences between the choices, they have to be able to understand the consequences associated with each choice, and that the consequences need to be felt in a vivid sort of way,