A curated scientific evidence directory

Scientific marketing studies for SaaS and technical founders

Explore peer-reviewed field experiments and meta-analyses on SaaS trials, email, paid search, referrals, content sharing and choice design. Compare methods, context and limits.

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Choice and decision designEvidence check: 4.5/5

Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload

Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409–425.

Plain-English take: The study found a mean effect size close to zero, with substantial variation across conditions. For your marketing: Avoid blanket advice to remove pricing plans or features just to reduce option count.

Question: Does offering more options reliably make people less likely to choose or less satisfied?

Design: Meta-analysis. Cross-study synthesis of 63 experimental conditions from 50 published and unpublished studies, involving 5,036 participants; conditions covered varied choice tasks and products.

The authors report a mean effect size close to zero, with substantial variation across conditions. The evidence did not support a general rule that larger assortments reliably cause overload.

Journal of Consumer Research · 201010.1086/651235Open author-hosted full paper; publisher article may require access

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Choice and decision designEvidence check: 3.5/5

Choice Overload: A Conceptual Review and Meta-Analysis

Chernev, A., Böckenholt, U., & Goodman, J. (2015). Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(2), 333–358.

Plain-English take: The useful point is four moderators that help explain when assortment size can have positive or negative effects: choice-set complexity, decision-task difficulty, preference uncertainty and decision goal. For your marketing: Use the moderators to form testable questions about pricing and product choice: Are plans meaningfully complex?

Question: Under what conditions do larger assortments help or hinder choice?

Design: Conceptual review and meta-analysis. Cross-study evidence covering varied choice tasks and settings; the analysis considered choice-set complexity, task difficulty, preference uncertainty and decision goals.

The authors identify four moderators that help explain when assortment size can have positive or negative effects: choice-set complexity, decision-task difficulty, preference uncertainty and decision goal. The work treats choice overload as conditional rather than universal.

Journal of Consumer Psychology · 201510.1016/j.jcps.2014.08.002Publisher abstract; corrigendum published in 2016

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Reviewed 2026-10-09. The summaries are original paraphrases. Consult the linked paper and any correction before citing or applying a result.