ABSTRACT
Nearly 100 million Americans go online to gather information and to decide what
products to buy online or offline, and 67 million buy products online (Pew Internet & American
Life Project, 2003). A number of “decision-facilitating Web sites,” such as
www.activebuyersguide.com, have appeared on the Internet to help consumers formulate
judgments and to make choices for a wide array of product categories. Decision sites
contain the information necessary for consumers to make a good decision; this
information is typically organized as a list of products (or options), described along a
number of features (or attributes) that qualify these products. But rather than just present
information, decision sites guide consumers through an interactive process that allows
them to reduce the number of options to a manageable size (winnowing), and to compare
a few surviving options side by side (comparison). Although side-by-side comparison is
the feature most frequently used by consumers (Morrison, Pirolli, & Card, 2001), our
focus is the interactive features for winnowing. Helping consumers winnow the choice set
is increasingly important because of the larger databases of product information available
on the Web. For example, suppose you need a new cell phone plan. If you visit the local
phone store, you might find about 10 plans that are available for your area. If you go online,
at www.point.com, you will likely find that there more than 100 plans for you to choose
among. Searching for information on the Web has suddenly increased the options set by at
least an order of magnitude, making winnowing features particularly necessary and useful.
