To me it seems like customers have, especially within the last few decades, come to expect the greatest possible version(s) of the products out there. As Barry Schwartz has pointed out in his discussion on the paradox of choice, this overload of choices causes paralysis and actually hurts the consumer by giving them an unnecessary amount of choices. A task that once took a few minutes to complete, may now take many hours of agony in order to make the best choice.
After watching Barry speak, I began to think about when consumers do and do not have endless amounts of choices. When I want the utmost in purchasing choices, I might go to Central Market or Whole Foods, where I begin seeing items I never even knew I could choose. I personally get so overwhelmed, even picking a laundry detergent is a difficult task. But say when I’m in a lower end grocery store, I might be left with fewer options, making the shopping experience look less appealing in my eyes.
We consumers want to make the best possible choice for us. Feeling we are different from every other joe-shmo, we want numerous options in our products so, that we can express those differences. To stick with the grocery shopping story – when you go to the store, what you buy or more what people see you buy can say a lot about you. People might not admit this but haven’t you ever looked at what the person in front of you is buying. This makes you wonder about them and what their lifestyle might be, right?
Every trip to the store is almost like a word association game. Flax seed granola = hipster; Cheap beer = college student, preferably male; and the stereotypes go on and on. But getting past the stereotypes, there is some truth to the correlation between the number of choices we as consumers are given, and in the end, how what we choose says something about us. It says something about us to the rest of the world.
So, even though sifting through all these choices can take minutes or hours away from your life, we consumers wouldn’t have it any other way. Because without these choices we couldn’t as adequately say what we want to say about ourselves. That we are unique.
To give you an example of when this happened to me most recently: I needed to purchase a small side item to bring to a dinner party. I wanted options. I wanted to bring the best side item I could and increasing the items meant more time but also more probability of success. In this case, Barry was right. I encountered the paradox of choice and walked through the entire grocery store what had to be 3 times. I was completely overwhelmed with all the possibilities. But in the end, I was successful. With all these choices, I asked for the expertise of the store attendant and made the best choice for me.
Everyone loved the candied jalapeño dip and grape, walnut salad. Success!
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Ah, Royal, and you relied on an expert to help you choose! This is one of the things we do when we lack motivation, opportunity, or ability (perhaps ability in this case... not that you can't choose food, but that you need some assistance making the best, most unique choice). And, yes, I always look at what the people behind me have in their cart. I definitely make a lot of assumptions about them based on the contents. One time when I was in grad school shopping at the Hancock HEB, the young college girl in front of me seriously had a six pack of beer, a pizza (made by the HEB, not from the frozen section, just to clarify), and a box of condoms. I had the image of some guy later tonight thinking he had the best girlfriend ever. I also wanted to tell her that she should hold out until marriage. ;-)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, if you're still reading this long comment... your post is really good, but it is bordering on being too short. For the ones going forward, I would try to go at least a little past the one-page guideline to be sure you get all of your points. Good job.