Information Overload Studies show inconsistent results and key questions remain to be answered. for instance, we still have to make clear the effect of increasing amount of provide information itself and the effect of other factors such as the level of involvement and the presence of time pressure.
If information overload occurs actually in consumer setting, policy makers who have tried to provide much information for consumer must reconsider their policies. Thus existence of information overload is important to consumers and policy makers.
In this study, we postulate that information overload is not a general phenomenon. Particularly, we postulate that if consumers are highly involved in the decision problem and if there is enough time to process the provided information, information overload will not occur. We also hypothesize that if consumers are lowly involved in the decision problem or if there is not enough time to process the provided information there will be the information overload.
Results in this study are as follows.
1. Information load and involvement are important to the quality of choice.
2. The higher is involvement, the better is the choice quality.
3. If consumers are highly involved and if there is enough time, information overload does not occur.
4. Under time pressure, there is the information overload.
5. The hypothesis that under low involvement and no time pressure, information overload occurs is not supported.
6. When there is a time pressure, the optimal information level is about 12 attributes per brand in our experiment.
7. If consumers are provided with proper amount of information, the choice quality under the time pressure is superior to the one under no time pressure.
