The Paradox of Choice

Normally I would write a short LinkedIn post about this but this time I thought of trying something new. Let me know what you think of this style vs the regular post style. Would you rather I stick to short form, long form or a mix of both?

Human psychology is a really fascinating thing.  Especially when it involves factors that we really aren't aware of impacting our daily decisions. It has a tendency to push us in a thousand different directions without us really understanding why.

I have made it my mission to document as many aspects of these weird behaviors that make consumers do what they do. And in this article, I wanted to discuss the impact of choice on buyer behavior.

So the main question here is: "What is better, having a lot of options per category or just a select few of each?"

Conventional thinking would say, give the user the choice to buy whatever they want. But have you ever looked into the problems that choice could present? Take a look at the image below that my good friend Mira shared with me when she went to buy tea...

It's interesting that she placed that large headline on the image. That's because she literally could not make up her mind on what to buy so after spending ten minutes in the aisle she ended up not buying anything and ordering from the local Starbucks!

This is really not surprising, studies have shown that having many options does attract more people, but having a few select items actually increases purchase intent by a factor of 10.

This is due to 2 main aspects of human psychology that flare up in these situations.

• Choice Paralysis
• Buyers Remorse (even if we didn't end up buying anything)

When presented with so many choices a lot of people lock up in the "What if" cycle.

"What if I bought this and it wasn't good?" "What if I got this one but something else was better?"

And this literally has nothing to do with how decisive you are as a person. If you are with Mira at any business setting, you will feel like you're sitting with a general. She's always clear about what is needed, when is it needed and how to get there.

It's just when she becomes the consumer and presented with so many choices - or alot of us for that matter - we just freeze.

Now contrast this with the experience of getting tea at Starbucks. Despite Starbucks having many options, it is still much easier to make a decision there.

But why is that?

Simple, its the presence of someone there who's sole job is to guide you. That is the other side of the coin. When buyers get stuck in choice paralysis, they tend to defer their decision making to someone else.

It's just easier that way. It also tends to cure the buyer's remorse issue all at once. If we didn't like the choice, it's not our fault because we could have definitely picked a better choice right?

To put this differently, having a massive number of choices reduces the likeliness of a customer making a purchase UNLESS they were guided.

Think about that next time when you are selecting what products you want to offer or the experience you want to put your customers through. If you intend to have many choices for your customers to pick from, make sure that there is a process in place to guide your customers through.

I do this by creating a "Drift" playbook or a specific email followup process. Another way to do it is by connecting potential buyers with an actual human being to guide them.

What is your process?