Top 20 movies! Top 5 restaurants in town! Top 100 universities in the world! From dining and entertainment to education and beyond, our daily lives are filled with rankings.
Consumers naturally focus on how highly something is ranked on a list to help them make decisions. But there’s another important feature we often overlook: the length of the list.
Does it matter whether an item is ranked 3rd out of 100 or out of 20? According to researchers, the answer is Yes.
A recent study led by NYU Shanghai Assistant Professor of Marketing Vivian Jieru Xie with collaborators and published in the Journal of Marketing Research, explores this influential factor. The team uncovers what they call the “rank length effect”: The same item is judged more positively on a longer list, although the perceived difference between rankings becomes smaller.
Think of the lists you consult on a daily basis. Rank length is a fundamental feature. Lists vary in length within the same category, and even within the same comparison set—consider, for example, “Top 5 Movies on Netflix” vs. “Top 100 Movies on Netflix”.
“Previous studies have primarily focused on the ranking itself—how a higher or lower position affects perception,” Xie explained. “We realized that while rankings are often studied, rank length—the number of items on the list—has rarely been examined. So, we set out to investigate the role of rank length in consumer judgments and decision-making, as well as the underlying reasons for this effect.”
To investigate this, the researchers conducted multiple studies, using both computed-based and real-world tests. They reported 10 of these studies in their paper, demonstrating the effect on product evaluations, willingness to pay, and choice, along with the underlying reasons for these differences.
🎬 Example 1: Longer Lists Make Top Picks Look Better
Question: Does rank length affect evaluations?
Scenario: Participants were shown either a “Top 3” or “Top 20” movie list and invited to rate the top 3 movies (which were the same in both lists).
Results: Participants who saw the longer list (Top 20) rated all three movies more positively—even though the movies and their rankings were identical on both lists. Additionally, the rating differences between these three movies were smaller, suggesting that a longer list made the movies seem more equally impressive.
🍽️ Example 2: Long Lists Boost Willingness to Pay
Question: Are people willing to pay more for the same item when presented on a longer list?
Scenario: Participants viewed a list of catering companies (either a Top 5 or a Top 20) and indicated how much they’d be willing to pay for services from the No.1 and No.5 ranked catering companies.
Results: Participants were willing to pay more for the identical catering service when it appears on a longer list. However, the price difference between the No.1 and No.5 ranked services were smaller.
🥐 Example 3: More Sales for the No.1 Best-Seller
Question: Would rank length influence sales?
Scenario: At a campus café and bakery, a best-seller list was displayed in the store, either Top 5 or Top 20. Customers could choose from over 30 different pastries in the bakery (more than 30 species in total). Researchers compared the sales of the No.1 ranked pastry.
Results: More of the No.1 Best-seller pastry was sold when the list was longer, even though the total sales of all pastries did not change. The longer list made the top item more appealing, even though it was the same No.1 pastry compared to all the other options in the bakery.
Across ten experiments, the researchers concluded that items on longer rank lists were evaluated more positively than the same items on shorter lists. However, the perceived difference between ranked items became smaller on longer lists. In addition, people were willing to pay more for identical items when they appeared on a longer list.
Interestingly, the researchers noted that when it came to making final choices, the effect of rank length varied depending on what consumers prioritized—the absolute rating of an item or its difference relative to other items.
“As our study shows, rank length really matters. It affects how people feel about items, how much they’re willing to spend, and their choice decisions,” said Xie. “We hope this inspires future research and a better understanding of how we make decisions in our ranking-saturated world.”