In Vancouver there is a shop called La Casa Gelato, which sells ice cream in every flavour you could possibly think of — and many more that you wouldn’t — dandelion or curry, for example. This business clearly embraces the philosophy of customer choice and, given its success, it seems to be right. But is lots of choice always a good thing? Persuasion researchers believe that sometimes too much choice can backfire and lead to less business.
In a series of supermarket experiments, shoppers were offered samples of a variety of jams from one manufacturer. Throughout the study, researchers varied the number of flavours offered, so that either six or 24 flavours were featured at any given time. When 24 were offered, only 3 per cent of consumers made a purchase. But when the options were reduced to just six, over 30 per cent of customers made a purchase. This tenfold increase in sales can be considered impressive. But why did it occur?
Research has shown that when presented with too many choices people often find the decision-making process frustrating, due to the burden of differentiating so many options from one another in an attempt to make the best decision. This can result in disengagement and subsequently reduce interest in the products being offered.
So is La Casa Gelato and its 200 flavours of ice cream making a mistake? Almost certainly not. For one thing, the weird flavours generate great publicity. Secondly, there is evidence that maximising the number of options you offer can be useful when customers possess expert knowledge of your product themselves.
But often customers don’t know what they want until they’ve looked at what’s available. In these cases, when businesses offer a large number of different options, they could well be inadvertently harming their sales. To give an example, a few years ago, a well-known shampoo manufacturer reduced its range from 26 varieties to 'only' 15, and quickly experienced a ten per cent increase in sales.
While it seems counterintuitive at first, it can often be useful to consider reducing the number of options you provide. This could be especially true if your customers are unsure of exactly what they should do. In these challenging economic times there might be additional benefits in terms of the cost savings that fewer inventory and reduced promotional materials bring.
Variety may well be the spice of life but, as research shows, sometimes too much variety, like too much spice, can spoil the dish.
Steve Martin is co-author of Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion, scienceofyes.com
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