Alexander Chernev

Who they are

Chernev studies consumer decision-making and marketing strategy. The 2015 paper is the work this site draws on.

This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

Choice overload: a conceptual review and meta-analysis (2015), with Böckenholt and Goodman. The analysis covered 99 observations and, rather than asking only whether choice overload exists, asked when it appears. It identified four moderators: how complex the set of options is, how difficult the decision task is, how uncertain the chooser's preferences are, and whether the chooser wants to minimise effort or find the best option. With those included, the overall effect was significant, which the authors note runs against earlier meta-analytic findings.

Key ideas

The central idea is that choice overload is conditional. It is most likely when options are hard to compare, the decision is difficult, the buyer has no clear preference, and the buyer is trying to minimise effort. For a shop or a website, that points to changing how people choose, through grouping, defaults and easy comparison, before cutting what they choose from.

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