The Tyranny of Choice
How sensible brands make it easier to buy.
Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. Every day, we’re addled with them. They crave attention. Drawing on our resources. And we don’t like them. In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz makes the point that, “Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.”
More options means; it’s more difficult to choose, there’s more of a chance of disappointment, our expectations are much higher and when things go bad we tend to blame ourselves, so we feel bad. More, often means less. Freedom to choose is good. But, too much choice, not so much. As the NYC cartoonist David Sipress said “Everything was better, back when everything was worse”.
The nobel laureate, Herbert A Simon, introduced (in 1956) the concept of maximisers and satisficers. A portmanteau of satisfy and suffice. Satisficers settle for something that’s good enough. They evaluate based on a threshold of requirements. Once met, they don’t worry about the possibility of something better. They’re happy to sacrifice better, for easy. Maximizers on the other hand, look for the best but risk disappointment. We’ve all been on that relationship testing walk on holidays looking for the best restaurant.
So, knowing this, how can your brand get chosen more often in a world of hyper choice. A world where people don’t like thinking, want effortless decisions, want to avoid choices, avoid risk, reduce anxiety and mostly make decisions that are just good enough.
It’s not rocket science but here’s some things to think about:
1. Meet the table stakes:
We set a minimum “threshold of consideration” for a category decision. What’s expected, what it needs to do. We then quickly determine what will suffice, at that moment, from the options. So I want a <thing>, turns to quick scan of <things> like that, from which we shortlist choices, which turns to a <this one’s fine> moment. To get in the game, a brand must be perceived to be <one of those things>, for that moment or occasion (or jobs to be done as Clayton Christensen described). Your brand needs to meet the minimum threshold (satisficing) and be mentally and physically available in that moment. That’s table stakes.
2. Make it easy:
People are lazy. They make choices that require the least effort. So, make it easy for them to choose you. Strong brand power (trust, heritage and reliability) makes it easier. Being top of mind and easy to buy or being “mentally and physically available”. And removing hassle or additional choices from a purchasing cycle, makes it easier. Same story for any category, from café’s to IT Enterprise Solutions to ecommerce sites. Make it easy to choose you and more people will. Then make it easy to buy you, and more people will.
3. Be consistent:
Just like friends, we choose solutions that consistently deliver our expectations and ditch the ones that let us down. From brand and user experience, to comms, to product, strong brands don’t fall short of expectations and deliver a consistent experience every time. We know what to expect. We don’t want surprises. We want enough to meet our need and we want unwavering consistency. Get the fundamentals right, consistently and don’t let people down. And that goes for comms, as much as it does for experience.
4. Be different AND distinctive:
There’s some debate around brand differentiation vs distinctiveness. Ehrenberg Bass have a view. They favour distinctiveness, being visible and recognisably yourself within a competitive set. They found that categories are mostly homogenous, once you’re in, the trick is distinctiveness. Differentiation, they found, had little effect. But, on the other hand, there’s a brand meaning and purpose brigade convinced otherwise. Mark Ritson wisely suggests it should be both. Brands should focus on getting recognised with ease (distinctiveness) and also on a realistic and relatively short set of associations or attributes that help to keep the customer (differentiation). BBH wrote a great paper on the power of and value of different. Differentiation, is arguably more important for smaller brands to get into a consideration set.
5. Change the game:
Alternatively, you can just rip up the rule book. Ignore how categories normally behave and re-imagine them. Blue Ocean Strategy suggests, it’s less effective to compete in the same space as your competitors (red water). Success comes from innovating new value and making the competitive set irrelevant (think Spotify, Whatsapp or Netflix). This is the nature of disruption and there’s lots of startup brands doing just this. They’re making it easier to try, easier to buy, easier to use and easier to afford. They’re creating new value, re-defining the threshold for consideration and making it easy for people to choose them. Triple threat.
Look, people mostly don’t give a shit. They’re lazy, they don’t want to think and mostly they want the easiest, most reliable solutions. Obvious, right? They don’t really care about most brands, products and services. So, be smart.
- There’s no point in being the new way to do <whatever it might be> if people don’t see that you easily meet that need.
- There’s no point in being brilliantly different if no one knows about you or you’re difficult to buy.
- There’s no point in stop starting strategies or having an inconsistent experience or look and feel so you’re seen as unreliable.
- And there’s no point in having a product or service that meets a need brilliantly, if it blends into the background and goes unnoticed.
There’s no silver bullet, but you can be a little smarter about the things you do and the things you don’t.
And remember, as Rory Sutherland said, “a flower is just a weed with an advertising budget”. Be the flower, not the weed.
Sources:
- How Brands Grow — Byron Sharp, 2010
- The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less — Barry Schwartz, 2004
- Blue Ocean Strategy — W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, 2004
- The Stupidity of Sameness and the value of difference — BBH
- Brand Distinctiveness The Lost Art — Ben Stuart
- Evidence concerning the importance of perceived brand differentiation — Byron Sharp
- Distinctiveness doesn’t need to come at the cost of differentiation — Mark Ritson
