The other day I watched a movie I’ve enjoyed several times before, Say Anything, starring a very young John Cuszak.

At its heart it’s a romantic comedy about an unlikely coupling, but it also dabbles with the issue of choice. One lead character knows what she wants out of life; the other (played by Cuszak) is quite clear what he doesn’t want by way of a career:

“I’ve thought about this quite a bit sir and I would have to say considering what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career. I don’t want to do that. My father’s in the army. He wants me to join, but I can’t work for that corporation.”

There’s no getting away from the fact that it’s nice to have a choice; but faced with an infinite number of alternatives and no easy way to navigate through them, that choice soon turns into a major headache.

For some time now social psychologists have been interested in the phenomenon of “too much choice”. A decade or so ago, one study compared stalls selling jam in a supermarket: the stall offering 24 alternative flavours attracted more attention. But the stall with just six ended up selling seven times as much jam.

More recently other studies have explored what causes this slightly counter-intuitive response to a large choice in customers’ minds, and what they’ve discovered is incredibly important.

First off, it’s important to understand what makes for an excessive choice. It’s not a matter of the absolute number of options provided; if that was the case Amazon wouldn’t sell a single thing! So it’s important to think in terms of how customers shop and, therefore, how many options they are choosing between at any one time.

In this regard, the Amazon site has a clever trick. Have you noticed how they tell you about products other people who bought a particular book have also bought, and only show five or so on the screen at once. Then further down the page you get five more books “on related topics”. Finally, you see a list of four or five books showing what customers buy who have looked at this book.

So, all of a sudden, rather than considering every book in existence, you are considering three groups of five that are proven to be relevant to your search; a comprehensive choice, but definitely not overwhelming.

So what makes for a situation where a consumer has too much choice?

There are three factors:

1. The visible range: how many options are perceived as being available at any one moment?  At one extreme imagine a room full of books with no labels separating them into categories… only the most determined would stay and look.
2. The range density: how close to one another are the visible options?  Choosing between twenty two-seater sports cars would be a headache. Choosing between twenty vehicles that range from bicycles to jumbo jets is much, much easier.
3. The number of data points to be considered: choosing between the jams should be quite straightforward, only the flavour varies.  However, choosing between the sports cars with all the data available on fuel efficiency, top speed, acceleration, optional extras, and so on, is far more taxing.

Whilst the temptation to offer your customers more and more products is high, there is lots of evidence to suggest doing so is counterproductive.  So before you add lots of variants to your range it’s worth keeping in mind that studies show:

• Customers find shopping a smaller range easier.
• They are more likely to buy where the range is smaller because one option is more distinctly identifiable as meeting their needs.
• They feel more satisfied with their choice when the number of alternatives is smaller (they’re less likely to have nagging doubts about something they didn’t choose).
• People may even think that your range is bigger when you reduce it (in one study a 25% range reduction led to higher perceptions of the assortment on offer).

What number of options is right for your customers depends on many variables, but if you see the purchase process from the consumers’ perspective, rather than your own expertise, it can soon become where the turning point between offering choice and overwhelming the customer comes.

One option is to have someone replicate your products with the same number of options and density using another product entirely. When your own expertise is stripped away you will appreciate the difficulty of choosing and the unconscious anxiety that the risk of choosing poorly can induce

In the film Say Anything, with one girl standing out so distinctly as the most attractive, Lloyd Dobbler finds selecting a partner infinitely easier than choosing a career, much to her father’s chagrin:

“A career? I’ve thought about this quite a bit sir and I would have to say considering what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career. I don’t want to do that. My father’s in the army. He wants me to join, but I can’t work for that corporation, so what I’ve been doing lately is kick-boxing, which is a new sport…as far as career longevity, I don’t really know. I can’t figure it all out tonight, sir, so I’m just gonna hang with your daughter.”

Sources: Iyengar & Lepper (2000): When Choice is Demotivating
Fasolo et al (2009): Size, Entropy and Density: What is the Difference That Makes Makes the Difference Between Small and Large Real-World Assortments?
Broniarczyk et al (1998) Consumers’ Perceptions of the Assortment Offered in a Grocery Category: The Impact of Item Reduction
Jessup et al (2009): Leaving the Shop Empty-Handed: Testing Explanations for the Too-Much-Choice Effect Using Decision Field Theory

Image courtesy: Kees Van Manson