The Personalization Paradox: Balancing Convenience and Privacy
It’s your friend’s thirtieth birthday next week, and you have been scouring the internet for over two hours now trying to find the perfect gift. Should you play it safe with a gift basket? You know she loves red wine and cheese, but what about that beautiful necklace you saw on… where did you see that again? You’ve gone through so many sites now you can no longer remember. Oh, and that bouquet of flowers was beautiful, maybe she would like that more than the wine!
In the end, you settle for the wine and cheese basket from the first website you browsed. With a deflated sigh you close your laptop, exhausted by the entire experience.
Does this sound familiar to you? This is a prime example of what is known to behavioral scientists as the paradox of choice, or choice overload: the overwhelming feeling associated with making a decision when faced with a large number of options.
Choice overload doesn’t just cause trouble for us while we’re stuck trying to make a decision. It also has negative consequences that continue after the choice has already been made. Returning to our example above, imagine that the following day, you come across a customizable engraved bracelet that you know your friend would have loved, and your heart sinks. This disappointment represents an additional opportunity cost: you feel reduced satisfaction with your selection because you can’t stop comparing it to alternatives.
It’s estimated that the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. That’s an awful lot of choice overload and opportunity cost to deal with. Can modern-day personalization technology help reduce the burden of choice?
References
- Schwartz, B. (2016). The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More. ECCO Press.
- Hoffman, C. (2017). What is a Browser Cookie? How To Geek. https://www.howtogeek.com/119458/htg-explains-whats-a-browser-cookie/
- Fulmer, J. (2021, September 21). The Value of Emotion Recognition Technology. IT Business Edge. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.itbusinessedge.com/business-intelligence/value-emotion-recognition-technology/
- Wheelwright, T. (2021, April 21). Cell phone behavior survey: Are people addicted to their phones? reviews.org. https://www.reviews.org/mobile/cell-phone-addiction/
- Consumer privacy in retail: The next regulatory and competitive frontier. (n.d.). Deloitte. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-retail-privacy-survey-2019.pdf
About the Author
Eva McCarthy
Eva holds a Bachelor of Science Mathematics degree and is currently undertaking a Master's in Cognitive and Decision Science at University College London. She is a committee member for UCL’s Behavioral Innovations Society, a student community of behavioral scientists that aims to deliver positive and sustainable behavior change within UCL and beyond. She also works for Essentia Analytics, a behavioral data analytics service that helps investment managers make measurably better investment decisions. Standing at the precipice of major technological upheaval she believes it is essential to apply behavioral science research to new technological advancements.
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