Uh, yeah there are. Grocery stores are the worst place in the world when it comes to choice anxiety. Which of these 150 brands of cereal do I want? God, sometimes I just walk out. Clothing might be right up there too. To bring it closer to home, app stores also breed this exact same type of choice misery. Which of these 40 calculator apps is the best one?
A couple of points, the first is that grocery stores do want to limit the number of choices they give you in any category because behavioral economics has shown that more choices mean fewer purchases.
Since some people are having a hard time believing me on this, you can check out this article:
Reprint: F0606C Offering customers too many product choices may decrease their sense of well-being.
hbr.org
Second, I think you are confusing brand with product. You'll find a small number of brands in any given segment, usually General Mills, Kellogg, Post, and the store brand. For organic/natural/sugar-free or smaller niche segments, you may find another specialty brand or two, but you might not find as many big brands in that niche. In any event, there aren't 150 different sugared corn-flake products to choose from. I'd be surprised if you could name three without doing a web search or going to the grocery store to look at the shelf.
The reason you want to walk out is that people really don't want that many choices, let alone making that choice every time they walk down the cereal aisle. This was one of my main points. Decision making is mentally fatiguing. People don't want to do it. That's why most people walk into the store and pick up their favorite cereal without having to make a decision. The experimental science confirms this.
App stores make the point even better. Do you really want a choice between 40 calculators? No. You want to look at maybe three and use some simple criteria to make your choice.
I feel like you're conflating the provider with the provisions. People seem to want to keep providers to a minimum, but they sure want access to a cornucopia of provisions.
Supermarkets don't want to put 150 indy cola makers on their shelf for two reasons:
1) As the research shows, given too many choices, people will just not buy. Supermarkets don't want to waste the shelf space.
2) The vast majority of people have already made their choice between Coke and Pepsi and are not looking for choice. They made their selection. They don't want to try 150 indy colas. They want to search for Coke or Pepsi and grab it without making a decision.
The few people who want choice and will try every cola available really are very few.
Having said that, me personally, I like to be able to choose from a pool of more than 1 phone or 1 computer. That was too suffocating. "Well... I could get the MacBook Pro, or the MacBook Pro."
Behavioral marketing pretty much shows that three choices is optimal. Apple tries to give you a choice in their products of a consumer version and a pro version by varying screen sizes and processor speeds. They do this because research shows people want a small number of choices. The research also shows that due to cognitive biases you can steer people to a particular choice based on the way you construct your offerings.
BTW, this stuff was taught at Ivy League (and equivalent) business schools twenty years ago when it was just making its way from psychology departments into business departments. It is taught in every business school today.
www.theepochtimes.com
