Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing

Citation: Debora Thompson, Rebecca Hamilton, Roland Rust (2005) Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing. Journal of Marketing Research (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Feature Fatigue: When Product Capabilities Become Too Much of a Good Thing
Download: http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.georgetown.edu/stable/30162393
Tagged: Consumer Research (RSS), Product Features (RSS), Feature Fatigue (RSS)

Summary

This paper shows that simply loading products with an increasing number of features is not always the best strategy for a firm. Too many features, also known as "feature fatigue", can occur when consumers become overwhelmed by the complexity of a product and/or the difficulty of using it. Consumers tend to give more weight to product capability before using a product and more weight to usability once they evaluate the product after use. Essentially, consumers shift their preference from product capability to proudct usability after product use. Because of this trend, consumers tend to choose the overly complex feature-loaded products at purchase, that do not end up maximizing their satisfaction upon use.

The authors' ran three studies in which participants evaluated or used web-based products to prove that though the effects of increasing the number of features on capability and usability are significant pre and post use, there is a shift in weight based on consumers' evaluations of these products. Study 1 tested how consumers’ intuitions about product capability and usability were related to the number of product features and whether perceived usability was related to expertise. The results of Study 1 show that consumers believe that increasing the number of features decreases the usability of products and increases their capability. However, regardless of participants’ expertise, their expected product utility and choices still favored products with a higher level of features. Therefore, consumers’ initially seem to prefer product capability over usability. In Study 2, participants customized their own products by self selecting additional features for said products. This study showed that the connection between adding product features and decreasing usability seems to hold even when the consumer individually selects each of the included features. Finally, in Study 3 the authors compared consumers’ evaluations of products with a low, medium, or high number of features before use and after use to test whether consumers would give more weight to capability before use than after use and whether consumers would give less weight to usability before use than after use. Study 3 results proved that product use changed consumer preferences in terms of favoring product usability over product capability once usage has occurred. In addition, experts and novices can both experience feature fatigue.

The authors also provide an analytical model based on the results of these studies to provide more information into the effect of feature fatigue. The model proves that choosing the number of features that maximizes the consumers' initial choice means including too many features, and potentially decreasing customer lifetime value.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

Firms should consider the option of offering a wider range of simpler more specialized products rather than all- purpose, feature-intensive products. Too many features can encourage initial purchase but damage satisfaction and reduce repurchase probabilities, leading to lower customer lifetime values. Firms can also offer extended product trials and recommendation agents to help customers chose the right products for their specific needs.