Shop Smart
D
ebora Thompson’s consumer behavior research has many
lessons for manufacturers and marketers, but consumers can learn from it, too. The next time you shop, remember these tips:
l
If the store (or Web site) offers a product trial, take it. There really is no substitute for direct experience.
l
If you cannot spend hands-on time with the product, try to adopt a concrete mindset anyway. Think about how you would use the product in everyday life. Mentally simulate the process of using a product’s features step by step.
l
Do not just compare the boxes of different products. Thinking about each product on its own merits is more likely to lead to a satisfying purchase than comparing marketing bullet points.
l
Remember that more is not always better. People too often make the mistake of choosing the option with the most features, leading to frustration once they open the box and realize it comes with a 100-page user’s manual.
Joking about this confounding, unnecessary device turned into a discussion of other hard-to-use, feature-filled items. “Here you have this super-smart person, a world-renowned scholar, and he cannot use his washing machine,” says Thompson, now an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “So we started talking about this and wondering, is this just our own anecdotal evidence, or is this a general tendency that consumers are overwhelmed with a lot of the products they buy?” Thus began their research on what they would come to call “feature fatigue.” A modern consumer would be hard28
pressed to find a plain cell phone; most also are audio players/cameras/minicomputers/gaming platforms. Manufacturers are locked in an apparent arms race to see who can put more bullet points on their boxes. “More” often seems synonymous with “better.” With that in mind, Thompson and her colleagues set out to discover just how much is enough. The answers have practical implications for manufacturers, marketers, and consumers alike. Now With 75 Percent More Bells and Whistles!
Evidence of feature fatigue — or feature creep, a similar concept — is abundant. It shows up in consumer blogs where authors rant about the complexity of a new appliance. It appears in online reviews written in colorful language by unsatisfied customers. Nearly everyone has a tale of a frustrating product they simply could not figure out. Thompson mentions a friend’s father who went so far as to place tape over the extraneous buttons on his remote control so he would not press them by mistake. Anecdotes are helpful, but given her background in social psychology, Thompson wanted data to explain the disconnect between what consumers want when they shop and what they get when they open the box and start using a product. “People are complaining about complex products,” Thompson says, “but they bought them in the first place. We are trying to understand this paradox.” In research first published in 2005 in the Journal of Marketing Research, then further highlighted in Harvard Business Review, Thompson, Rust, and Rebecca Hamilton (now an associate professor at the University of Maryland) designed a set of experiments comparing perceptions of a product’s capability with its actual usability. In one experiment, the researchers simulated an in-store experience by presenting study participants with interfaces for digital audio and video players that had either seven, 14, or 21 features. They asked participants to rate each model’s perceived capability and usability. Although participants were aware that feature overload might decrease a player’s ease of use, 62 percent still chose the most feature-rich options. A second experiment backed up those results by instructing participants to cus-
tomize their own product by choosing from a list of 25 features. Again, these would-be consumers stuck with a “more is better” mentality; they chose an average of 19.6 features for their customized players. A third experiment tested how much hands-on use changed consumers’ choices. Study participants were split into two groups. A “before use” group could pick between two virtual products, one with seven features and one with 21, but they could not actually try these products. An “after use” group chose between the same products after testing them. Hands-on experience played a crucial role: 66 percent of the “before use” group chose the option with 21 features, compared with just 44 percent of the “after use” group. These results create a conundrum for marketers and manufacturers. Past consumer behavior research has shown that if companies add features to a product — even trivial, unnecessary features — consumers are likely to view that product as newer or more desirable than other models. Because of that, Thompson says, “Marketers and engineers really have this ‘Why not?’ mindset. Adding features is an easy and often inexpensive way to create differentiation.” On the flipside, usability research has shown that performing simple functions becomes more difficult for users as features are added to a product. Poor usability creates frustrated consumers, and frustrated consumers are less likely to buy a company’s products in the future — and more likely to spread negative word of mouth. On the surface, “less is better” might seem like the ultimate message, but the message is not that simple. Some companies, including electronics maker Philips and camera maker Flip Video, have had success marketing the simplicity and ease of use of their products, but that approach will not work for everyone. “Simplicity and usability can be effective points of differentiation,” Thompson says, “but it’s more difficult. It’s certainly easier to add more stuff and say, ‘We have more.’” Often, if a company moves entirely toward feature-poor products, they will lose sales to their feature-touting competitors, regardless of relative quality, Thompson says. Managers need to assess the proper number of features that will msb.georgetown.edu