Washington, Aug 11 : An Indian-origin researcher and her team have provided the first evidence on the impact of the size and quality of an assortment has on consumers when they make purchasing decisions.

Professor Sheena Iyengar, S. T. Lee Professor of Business, Management conducted the study along with Marco Bertini, Assistant Professor of Marketing at London Business School and Luc Wathieu, Associate Professor at McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University.

When consumers are confronted with a proliferation of options, they will sharpen their appreciation of quality, and a switch to superior products will become more enticing.

Subsequently, a switch to inferior products will become less tolerable.

The research was inspired by the phenomenon that for many upscale goods, such as wine, while variety available to consumers has increased, prices have also increased - contrary to economic models that find competition leads to lower prices.

The researchers found that at events with a denser assortment of wine, people paid more for the bottles with high appraisals and less for the ones with lower appraisals.

Furthermore, participants started bidding more for the high-end wines and offering lower prices for lesser vintages when a catalogue contained 40 or more different price categories.

"When the product is desirable instead of functional, consumers flooded with a range of choices will focus on quality, and not price," Iyengar explained.

The study will be published in the American Marketing Association's Journal of Marketing Research. (ANI)