Too Many Choices - a Problem That Can Paralyze a Customer

Too Many Choices: A Problem That Can Paralyze a Customer

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The salad options at a Woolworths supermarket in Sydney, Australia. Too many choices can trouble consumers.

The article’s statement is linking idea of many choices in supermarkets negatively with accumulated marketing experience over the past century. Surely there has been no time in marketing history where the idea of choice has changed more noticeable. A quick reflection on a typical supermarket reveals how marketing has revolutionized this specific store and the world as a whole. Most people commute to buy in the store which suggests a choice of different products and different departments. During the workday, chances are high that the particular customer from a downtown will go down to the nearest supermarket in order to make his or her choice regarding some product. Upon leaving home, family members will be reached through different networks of supermarkets that use the same technologies of marketing. Each of these common occurrences would have been inconceivable at the turn of the 19th century. 

In the beginning of the article the author attempts to bridge that negative attitude through her personal example with her son who was trying to make a choice at an ice cream store. She wants to describe a negative influence of many choices and her son's fear that the next option would have been better. Nevertheless, I should admit from my personal experience that when I was at the same age and at the same store, I would rather be happy, and I was happier with a wide variety of desserts I could obtain back then. Hence, it could be an author’s personal opinion rather than a solid factual statement. Therefore this assumption from the beginning creates negative shade to the need of people to have many choices while choosing a product. Looking back at the introduction, one could argue that without a big choice in a supermarket, the hypothetical buyer would need to find alternate store. Another buyer would be satisfied by simplicity of a choice. Anyway, this is more marketing attitude towards a client, than a real issue of marketing.  

However, the reliance on marketing as a science does not necessarily preclude the buyer's desire to have many choices. The next author's examples reveal that a large assortment in a store might be more and more debilitating for customers. 

The first problem with this assumption is that she gives an example of a jam study, which was conducted in a California gourmet market that is often used to bolster this point of view. In this experiment jam's jars were the only group of a product; it was not even a line of products. But eventually it negatively addresses this studied issue towards the idea of many choices. Instead of that I would rather compare presented author`s results with monthly sales results obtained from different supermarkets, but from the same shelves or lanes. Does it affect level of profitability? Does it have influence on turnover ratio of these Wilkin & Sons jams? Does it affect dynamics of sales? Author provides assessment of the particular case only.

The second problem is that the author provides a bit controversial information within this article. Her main statement has strong negative side, but the next example provides different research form the University of Basel in Switzerland. It says that too many choices are not always bad. That we have to rely on the type of expertise while we are making a choice. Personally, I would admit that in order to make a choice in a store at least you have to have this choice! No choice - no issues with making a decision! 

Third, the author goes further and in order to support Mr. Sheibehenne’s idea she gives her personal example of spending a great deal of time trying to decide which company should provide her internet, phone and television cable service. She faced difficulties of a wide variety while she was making her decision. I would say that it is not up to the issue of a choice, but rather to the lack of information, education and understanding or both! It is not even a research, but just a personal opinion. For instance, if you want to repair your car you will go to your mechanic across the street. Of course, you can go directly to “AutoZone” and you will face the problem of a big choice over there. But it will be so only because of your lack of knowledge in that specific field, but not because of many choices.      

Finally, author tends to show regional differences in different countries concerning contrast of “choosing experience”. That most of our decisions are less weighty, and we have to become more comfortable with the idea of “good enough”. According to Mr. Scheibehenne in her article: “It is not clear that more choice gives you more freedom”. Hence, for me it causes the next questions – What is clear then? What gives you a freedom? Alina Tugend gives only assumptions and hints, but does not give answers or marketing statistical data, which is basically allegation without documentation.  

In contrast to the statements of the article, we can see from our everyday life how lack of choice frees the customers’ expectations. Consider how the digital revolution and the advent of the personal computers have allowed for unprecedented exchange of marketing ideas and collecting information about a customer. Nowadays each company has a marketing department, what permits top-management to do a self-research in order to make prompt, verified and expensive decisions. This ability opens pathways of thinking that were previously closed off for the most of the companies. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart: “Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they will come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more”.

This last example provides the most hope in how ability to choose actually gives hope to the future of retail business. By increasing our reliance on real marketing research, impossible goals can now be achieved. By using merchandising technology we can guide and satisfy our customers instead of causing a headache to them.     

To sum up everything above I can admit that it is not "too much choice” in our everyday life. But choice will always mark the marketing experience, from the discovery of relationship between demand and proposition to the implementation of marketing strategy in the modern companies and organizations. Given the history of marketing, there will be no limit to the number of choices, both big and small, for us to tackle. There is no need to retreat to an attitude that many choices create issues, but rather embrace a hopeful posture to the idea that only a choice provides for new avenues of marketing.