The Strategist Notebook

Last weekend I was at a Japanese buffet restaurant. Located in an up market district, this restaurant probably offers the most extensive array of choices I have ever seen in a buffet dinner. And it made me nervous.

Seriously, there were moments of discomfort as I enter the premise with my family and look at their 3000 sq feet seating area with the huge crowds fleeting around popular dishes like the sashimis and the oyster bars. There were literary hundreds of choices just from the Japanese section itself, not to mention the arrays of Chinese and Indian food added to the variety. I was actually feeling discomfort at not knowing where to start.

Not having choices should the mark of misery but on the contrary I actually thought that perhaps we would have better off headed off to KFC for a bucket of fried chicken. Why should this be?

Research has shown that a large array of options may discourage a decision to purchase because the effort to make the decision has significantly increased. Or even cause depression.




Not long ago, a study was conducted in a foot store where customers were accustomed to trying out new products. Researchers set up a table featuring high quality jams and encouraged customers to taste them – giving each taster a coupon so that he or she could get money off when they purchase a jar. In one sample of the study, six varieties of jam were available for testing and in another sample of the study 24 variety were available. In either case all the 24 varieties were for sale.



The result is mind blowing. Obviously the larger arrays of jam attracted more tasters than the small array. But when it comes to purchases, 30% of the customer exposed to the small array bought a jar of jam while only 3% of those exposed to the larger array did so.

It appeared that a large array of options may discourage a decision to purchase because the effort to make the decision is significantly increased – so customers decide not to decide.
One of the reasons we don’t feel good about choices is the concept of regret. Post decision regret or buyer’s remorse. What if you should have purchase the laptop with the additional memory and extended warranty rather than a standard package. Darn, how stupid was that now that something is wrong and you need to pay a bomb to get it fixed. We have all had that before.

So marketers next time around when it comes to decision on product mix, forget about the product length, the product depth and the product width. Focus on your best products, after all its common sense that your best products are often the most profitable one because you made it the best and customer tends to buy a lot of it. Forget about being everything to everybody, not in this era, at least. After all, it was not all arrogance that made Henry Ford quote “You can have any color you want so long that it is black”.