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Consumer Choice

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The term information overload is used to refer to a state of affairs whereby there is a disparity between the volume of information available to a person and the ability of that person to process that information. The inability to process all the available information can lead to dysfunctional consequences. The subject has been the focus of various studies that have focused on information overload in relation to: input overload, sensory overload, cognitive overload, content overload, information fatigue syndrome and the availability of excess information. From an empirical perspective the level of informational overload may be denoted by the volume of information which is available to a person and the ability of that person to process the information which is inherently affected by storage capacity limits and the human brain processing limits.

Studies have shown that consumers who use the internet and other electronic applications that help in purchase decision making like comparison shopping agents may be overcome by the quantity of information that is available to them with regard to choice decision making, resulting in the inability of the consumer to make a decision (Malhotra 436). The consumer may lack the processing capacity to make a choice or ultimately may be dissatisfied with the choice they have made because of the existence of so many choices. In the last decade the use of the internet has increased significantly and an aspect that has come with this growth is internet shopping. Businesses have found that the internet is a powerful medium of selling their products and services and consequently have invested heavily in this new medium of reaching the consumer. The growth of internet shopping has also seen a significant increase in the number of internet online vendors who are responsible for a wide variety of choices facing the consumer today.

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