“Isn’t the wealth of information creating tremendous clutter that makes decision making even more difficult? We’ve heard a lot in recent years about the concept of “too much choice” and information overload, the notion that too many options and too much information may overwhelm consumers to a point where they don’t buy at all or make poor decisions. Many observers use these concepts to support their belief that brands and loyalty are more important than ever. We don’t think so. First the idea that consumers should or will consider all or most of the available information indiscriminately is an unrealistic “strawman”. The web provides very effective tools for sorting and using the most relevant information. Also, based on a recent review, it appears that the choice overload problem is not nearly as serious as one might expect based on some highlighted findings. The review article, which combined the results of fifty experiments dealing with the phenomenon, concluded that “the overall effect size in the meta-analysis was virtually zero”. And with the steady improvement in information and option-sorting tools, the overload problem will become even less significant.”