The Effectiveness of Balanced Product Explanations for Decision Support in Online Shopping
摘要
Online shoppers often face decision overload when confronted with a vast number of similar-looking products, especially in high-stakes categories like electronics. To make informed choices, users typically shortlist a few items and examine product specifications and user reviews to identify key trade-offs. This process is time-consuming and cognitively demanding. Product listings typically highlight basic attributes like price and ratings, but often fail to disclose potential drawbacks or trade-offs early in the decision process. In this paper, we propose to integrate balanced explanations, brief summaries of pros and cons, directly into the product listing page. By providing balanced explanations upfront, this design aims to help users more efficiently narrow down options and make confident, informed decisions without needing to explore individual product pages. We conducted a within-subject user study (N = 352) comparing baseline listings with a version that included pros and cons. Results show that users preferred the balanced explanation and reported greater confidence in their selections. NFC predicted lower reported influence from pros-and-cons notes, while CISB predicted higher preference for their availability.. Our findings offer practical insights for designing transparent, user-centered recommender systems that support effective early-stage decision-making in online shopping.