Is this the greatest challenge in modern marketing?
November 28th, 2006Do you remember when you had to choose a home loan? Or car insurance? Or a printer? Did you go online? How many choices did you have? Did it make you happy having those choices? Barry Schwartz says it didn’t.
In “The Paradox of Choice” Barry Schwartz tells us that all this choice doesn’t make us happier, it makes us unhappier. This is a short bit from a review in the New Yorker:
For one thing, choice can be “de-motivating.” In a study conducted several years ago, shoppers who were offered free samples of six different jams were more likely to buy one than shoppers who were offered free samples of twenty-four. This result seems irrational—surely you’re more apt to find something you like from a range four times as large—but it can be replicated in a variety of contexts. Students who are offered six topics they can write about for extra credit, for instance, are more likely to write a paper than students who are offered thirty.
It appears that our brains can’t really cope. We were obviously not really wired for all this choice.
So what does that mean when we as marketers offer more and more variety, more brands, more options? It doesn’t sound like we’re on a winner here.
It supports a lot of modern marketing and branding thinking:
- Brand becomes even more important as a basis for choice (rather than evaluating features and benefits)
- It indicates that there really is little future in being “one of the pack” with some extra features or a slightly better price
- Building relationships with a targeted, select group of customers (as outlined in Permission Marketing) can make your brand stand out as the easiest choice when customers are ready to make their choices
If you would like to see Barry Schwarz talk about his ideas click here
December 5th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Hi David - You’re on the money here. Ries and Trout also talk about our limited capacity to hold multiple information pieces of info in each mental “cubbyhole”. Hence, the need for unique positioning. Though I have no data to back me up, I tend to agree that consumers will tend to default to the “safe” name brand when they’re bombarded with choice, unless a strong case can be made otherwise.
December 5th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Thanks Will. Like you say, “unless there is a strong case to be made otherwise”, i.e. there is significant differentiation in the offer. It’s interesting you talk about the importance of unique positioning in this context. I agree with you but it is very poorly understood what this actually means, why it is important and how you achieve it. Must be another post in there…
David