Controlling the Information Flow: Effects on Consumers’ Decision Making and Preferences
One of the main objectives facing marketers is to present
consumers with information on which to base their
decisions (Anderson and Rubin 1986; Bettman 1975). Presenting
such information is not simple, and it contains an
interesting dilemma. On the one hand, a vast amount of
information could be relevant, even very relevant, to some
consumers. On the other hand, presenting superfluous information
might impede consumers’ ability to make good
decisions (Bettman, Johnson, and Payne 1991; Jacoby,
Speller, and Berning 1974; Malhotra 1982; Scammon 1977).
Therefore the task facing marketers is not simply to present
consumers with every piece of semi-related information but,
rather, to present consumers with information that is appropriate
for their specific current needs. The difficulty is
that marketers cannot always know a priori what information
is needed for any individual consumer. Without knowing
what information is relevant, the amount of information that
is potentially relevant can be very large. In order to solve
this difficulty, marketers can provide consumers with interactive
information systems that allow consumers to be appropriately
selective in their own information search (Alba