How Choice Fatigue Affects Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping

Although online shopping now accounts for a significant portion of all consumer sales worldwide, current e-commerce websites are usually inundated with various product options that result in information overload for consumers. Consumers find online shopping to be time-consuming, when they need to compare product options causing choice fatigue. Choice fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making. Although cognitive science acknowledges that choice fatigue affects the quality of decision-making, it remains unclear how it affects consumers' decision-making in the online shopping environment. Investigating that topic, this paper discusses whether consumers rely on decision-making shortcuts amid choice fatigue and whether the provision of such shortcuts increases their satisfaction. Empirical experiments were conducted through an online shopping platform that contained several versions of T-shirt selection pages to investigate consumers' choice. The results indicate that consumers reply on decision-making shortcuts regarding early options amid choice fatigue but not on the bestseller options. Moreover, there is no preference for the bestseller options even though bestsellers alleviate the burden of making purchasing decisions.