Consumer Culture and Abundance of Choices: Having More, Feeling Blue

*Ondřej Roubal*

## **Abstract**

The defining feature of contemporary consumer culture is the escalation of consumption opportunities and the expanding space for choice. An unbridled and unrestricted range of products is part of material prosperity, rising living standards, and emancipation of human freedoms. The growing demands for constant consumer decision-making in an increasingly opaque environment of potential targets of choice exposes consumers to the risk of procrastination, passivity, and resignation, as well as psychological discomfort. The goal here is to contribute to theories of consumer behavior in the context of the psychological experience of choice under the conditions of the accelerated quantity of consumption volumes against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. While conventional offline shopping was drastically curtailed during the coronavirus crisis, freedom of consumer choice was maintained despite many proclamations to the contrary. I seek to provide support to the claim that freedom of consumer choice was maintained and often amplified during the pandemic in the online virtual environment of digital commerce formats. Freedom of consumer choice has merely been transformed into a horizontal level of application by the relatively rapid and fluid conversion of market activities into the cyberspace of a growing number of e-stores and online supermarkets, unconstrained by the physical space of shelves and counters.

**Keywords:** abundance, choice, consumer culture, consumer opportunities, decision making, consumer behavior, consumption, COVID-19

## **1. Introduction**

The goal in this chapter is to contribute to theories of consumer behavior in the context of the psychological experience of choice under the conditions of an explosive and expansive sphere of consumption opportunities against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this pandemic, shopping has become much more intensely concentrated in the online virtual environment consisting of digital formats of commercial transactions, and the space of choice for consumers in that online environment has expanded extensively. During the coronavirus crisis, the volume of e-commerce sites offering an assortment of products grew rapidly and their overall activity increased rapidly [1]. Not only did the number of e-shops and

online supermarkets increase, but at the same time the sales offering of individual retailers also grew, no longer limited by the physical space of shelves and counters. "Digital tools enable reduced searching costs and provide instant access to a much wider variety of products and services…" [2]. It is this fact of extending the range of shopping options within the digitized formats of eshops that positively contributed during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensuring the availability of requisite supplies and the possibility of their convenient transport directly to homes, during both personal quarantines and area lockdowns. On the other hand, however, in such a situation of abundant choices, what is known as the *Schwartz paradox of choice* comes into play [3]. Schwartz's basic thesis assumes that an overabundance of choices contributes to a decrease in happiness and reduces customers' motivation to buy. This idea is echoed by other authors. "Not only does offering more options lead to higher costs for the company, larger assortments often lead to lower probability of purchase and decreased satisfaction due to choice overload" [4]. Kinjo and Ebina [5] developed a proprietary mathematical model to calculate the optimal quantity of products offered by retailers in order to maximize sales, depending on the size of customers' invested costs in product selection. These authors confirm the thesis that markets in the real world and in cyberspace should adapt to a moderately sized product offering, which would lead not only to higher sales but also to much more favorable psychological effects on customer behavior. "Other studies show that people actually experience the greatest satisfaction when choosing from intermediate set of choices, not too small and not too big" [6]. More recently, the problem of the paradox of choice has been addressed at the metaanalytic level of interdisciplinary research in the behavioral and social sciences by Zhang and Xu [7]. In the process they arrived at the surprising finding of a high degree of inconsistency in academic results at both the theoretical and empirical levels of research. In doing so, they applied their own mathematical analysis and extensive simulation theories.

COVID-19 significantly reduced the possibilities of conventional offline shopping and limited the volumes of product offerings for some time [2]. However, business transactions moved rapidly to the online environment and supply chains quickly adapted to the indicators of consumer market demand [8]. The temporary problem of lack of product supply due to the reduction of offline shopping was quickly resolved by the rapid conversion to online sales [9]. Thus, COVID-19 did not significantly restrict freedom of consumer choice, but merely triggered its horizontal transformation and shifted its application to the digitalized sphere of shopping. The paradox of choice, originally elaborated by Schwartz [3] and developed in various contexts by a number of other authors [10–12], applied universally even in the era of the coronavirus crisis, inaccurately equated with the drastic reduction of consumer freedom of choice and the associated frustration of customers.

In this context, I will expose and evaluate the more general and apparently universally operating foci of tension and conflict generated in an environment of an increasingly dense network of consumption opportunities, in which the decisions of actors and the outcomes of choices are confronted with negative subjective experiences of regret, anxiety, or disappointment. Last, I will identify and sequentially explain the main sources reducing satisfaction from consumer choices made in an environment of abundant opportunities. I will focus on the circumstances of the influence of information, aspirations, and hedonistic adaptation as potential sources of their psychological discomfort. These are firmly integrated in the sphere of consumer decisions yet, I presume, are only minimally reflected in the everyday activities of consumers.

*Consumer Culture and Abundance of Choices: Having More, Feeling Blue DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105607*

### **2. Methods**

This chapter presents a theoretical study based on critical reflection on the discourse regarding changing consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The method used to achieve the stated objectives consisted of critical literature review, comparative analysis, and meta-analytical evaluation of selected review and empirical studies aimed at understanding changes in consumer culture and consumer behavior. The critical literature review mainly reflects studies with a sociological, behavioral economic, social psychological, psychological, and partly anthropological focus. At the same time, more detailed attention has been devoted to a critical review of sociological studies from 2020 to 2022 referencing current transformations of consumer behavior during the time of the COVID-19 crisis. Relevant scholarly sources were identified using the ProQuest and ProquestEbooks databases. The methodological framework is built on an attempt to create a theoretical platform of arguments, insights, critical perspectives, and opinions, challenging some stereotypically accepted conceptions of consumer decision-making and freedom of consumer choice in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter is intended to prompt future scholarly efforts to empirically investigate patterns of consumption behavior internalized during the COVID-19 crisis and the dynamics of their further strengthening or, conversely, weakening in the post-COVID period. The theoretical conclusions that follow can be developed and further verified through experimental studies and quantitative and qualitative research methods.
