Week 3 - Are more choices making life worse?

This weeks lecture covered topics that are more into the designing aspects of effecient CRM.

Data ware housing architectures , the ETL process , customer data base design. The end users are not, to be quite hosnest, bother about what we poeple ( at leats subjects perspective) design as long as they get what they want and satisfied.

But the scenario which was beautifully explaned by Barry Schwartz, are peoples life made miserable with more choices. I would like to point out in this instance the Doctor - Patient example that he gave in his seminar. This is one situation where a patient cannot afford to choose an option. If people are left with difficult choices like this choosing right medication,nothing worse can happen by more choices.

His main idea was that more choices leads to dissatisfacation. Its very true ( at least in mycase ). The moment I pay for a product i get an impression the other one might be better that what i just paid for. How many of us are content with what we have? . I believe the answer " yes " to this is very less. Barry also mentioned this leads or fuelles suicidal tendency.

Now how many companies are concerned about this and customers perspective. They in the name of "giving more choice to customers make our life harder". In my understanding companies cash in the oppurtunity at the cost of customers. Let me give you an example here - have any one found or baught a laptop of their intended configuration. Trust me you cant. If you look for high speed/configuration either its screen size will be larger or you wouldnt get enough storage - if some one looks for more multimedia kind of a system you wouldnt get enough speed - some thing or the othr should be compromised in this instance. My question here is if a company can manufacture a system with different configuration why cant they build a system that has everything in it?.

One more thing I wanted to mention before I conclude is that more choices also puts financial pressure on individuals. Of course we wouldnt be buying two laptops for use but the example Barry gave us that we may be provoked to buy two Jean's - so it adds financial pressure or mental pressure if we cant afford to buy two of them. This in case of kids and children is much more dangerous.Either parents are put under financial pressure if not the kids are affected.

To conclue I strongly agree with Barry Schwart's argument that More choices definetely make life worse and I would like to add a saying that " Honey over and above he limit becomes poision " and tha is what happening at the present time.

Please post you comments and we will have an healthy discussion about this

Thanks,
Venkat