Inside Outdoor Winter 2018

Secret #1: Simple is Best Retailers are finally learning that having more products won’t necessarily win over customers. We already are overwhelmed with too many choices. Who wants to dig through racks of sameness to find one great item? Not many. Remember the KISS method. Keep it Simple Stupid. Larry Schwartz maintains in his book “Paradox of Choice,” that given too many choices humans will simply not be able to choose. Many experiments have prov- en this to be true. One such study was conducted by Professor Sheena Lyengar from Columbia University. In a California gourmet market, a booth was set up with samples of W&S jams. Every few hours the offering was switched from a selec- tion of 24 jams to a group consisting of only six. On overage, customers sam- pled two jams regardless of assortment size. All told, 60 percent of the partici- pants were drawn to the larger sampling while 40 percent stopped by the smaller one. What’s interesting is that 30 percent of those who were drawn to the smaller assortment bought while only 3 percent exposed to the larger assortment did. Presence of choice might sound ap- pealing as a theory, but in practicality, more choice is oftentimes overwhelming and results in lower sales. The takeaway: more is not always better. winter 2018 | Inside Outdoor 23