In today’s marketplace, consumers are bombarded with more choices than ever – yet they are increasingly less satisfied. Whether they are buying a car, choosing a cell phone plan, ordering a beverage at Starbucks, or selecting a breakfast cereal at the supermarket, Americans are finding that simple decisions have turned complicated, time-consuming, and confusing.
One hundred years ago, customers clamored for more choices. Their lack of options was famously summed up in Henry Ford’s quip about the Model T: “People can have any color they want, as long as it’s black.”
Today, there are more than 1,100 vehicle models for sale in the United States, according to the book Trout on Strategy, by Jack Trout. And for each of these models, buyers can select from
a rainbow of colors, plus scores of standard and optional features ranging from heated seats to global positioning satellite navigation systems.
The choices in nearly every
product category have multiplied to the point where a simple purchase has become an excruciating experience.
For example, when Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory and social action at Swarthmore College, strolled into a Gap store to buy a pair of jeans, he expected the transaction to take five minutes.
After all, the last time he bought jeans was a few years ago, and back then there was only one style. He asked a salesperson for a pair of jeans in his size.
Her reply was: “Do you want them slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy? Do you want them stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed? Do you want them button-fly or zipper-fly? Do you want them faded or regular?”
As Schwartz recalled in a recent interview with The Times of London, he spent most of the day trying on his various options, not sure which one was best. Ultimately, he ended up with a pair of jeans that fit better than his old pair, yet he was less satisfied. After doing so much research, he expected the fit to be perfect, and he was disappointed. He was also worried that he had picked a style that was less fashionable than some of the many other styles he tried.
As Schwartz observes in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, “By vastly expanding the range of choices, [the store] had also created a new problem that needed to be...
