Decision Paralysis: When more isn’t necessarily better
Do you want your coffee hot or cold? Are you having a latte, macchiato, americano, cappuccino? What type of coffee beans will you have? Are they light roast, medium roast, dark roast? Do you take whole milk, skim milk, oat milk, soy milk, almond milk? And what size will that be?
Too Much Choice
Each day, we are bombarded with options and plagued with making choices about literally everything — from our morning coffee at Starbucks, prioritizing tasks at work, restaurant options at lunch, at the grocery store while shopping for ingredients to make dinner, shopping online for jeans… And do we really need 20 different brands of black garbage bags stocked on the shelves in stores? We are constantly presented with choices in our everyday life and although an explosion of choices may indicate that we sometimes get exactly what we want, too many choices can also overwhelm us to the point where we choose nothing at all or if we do buy, we are less satisfied with our selection.
Options Are Tiring
As a frequent user of online food delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats and Grubhub, I will shamelessly admit the number of times I have spent hours, literally hours, in one session scrolling through cuisine, restaurant, and menu options only to become too fatigued to make a decision. It’s incredibly upsetting as I’ve invested so much of my valuable time searching for something to eat and end up with nothing at all. And I am not alone — research published by the American Psychological Association has proven that we become more fatigued and less productive when we are faced with a plethora of options. When faced with numerous choices, people find it difficult to stay focused enough to complete projects, handle daily tasks or even take their medicine. Of course we can all agree that it is beneficial to have choices, but to what extent?
Finding the Right Balance
Many businesses operate on the assumption that the more choices they offer, the more likely customers will be able to find just the right thing. For instance, by offering 20 styles of winter coats instead of 5, they can increase the chances that shoppers find exactly what they are looking for. But nothing could be further from the truth as businesses ignore the outcome of choice: having more options requires increased time and effort, can lead to anxiety, regret, and excessively high expectations. Essentially, the more options customers are presented with, the more difficult it becomes to buy a product. Instead of creating an unnecessary clutter of items, brands should focus on what they are good at and provide a limited number of products that are suitable for their target audience.
More isn’t always better, either for the customer or for the retailer. Discovering how much variety is necessary is a considerable challenge that businesses are confronted with but those that get the right balance will be amply rewarded.
