Abstract

Three related experiments were performed to investigate a phenomenon called consumer information overload. The effect of amount of information and physical property of information(verbal vs. pictorial) on choice accuracy and psychological states of subjects during choice process was examined. Although the two independent variables had no effects on the choice accuracy measured in terms of additive rule, it was found that the more information subjects received, the more they experienced psychological overload, and that verbal presentation of the information tended to make subjects experience overload more than pictorial presentation did. Next, more information, verbal presentation, and low level of pictualization likelihood affected memory recall negatively. Especially. the pictorial presentation of inforamation was more effective than verbal pre· sentation, in case the attributes presented were difficult to be pictualized. It was also found that subjects used various heuristics to defend overload experiences. They did not use entire information presented and spent much more time on each of information units as the amount of information increased. These results suggest that while consumers can always be overloaded in complex information circumstances. they are likely to utilize a variety of strategies to avoid being overloaded in real situations.