Blog Post 2

Barry Schwartz has some interesting things to say about the world we live in. While I can’t say that I agree with all of them, I can say that he intrigues me. Let us look at how Barry’s ideas relate to customer decision making. How can we use his ideas to better understand our customers, from a marketing view?

Everything on this Earth experiences some sort of evolution as time goes by, this goes with the territory of survival of the fittest. Certain heuristics are ingrained in human nature, or as Barry says “in our water supply” that we accept this as fact. I am not talking in the sense of a religious, “origin of life” argument on evolution, so don’t get too offended. But, like Barry says, humans believe that more is better, in the case of freedom, thus also in the case of choices. What Barry argues is that in fact, more is not better. He says that more choices lead to paralysis, escalating expectations and disappointment, depression due to self-loathing, and more. If this is true, then marketers need to consider his argument in order to better understand the customer and their decision process.

What has gone wrong in the new age of choices? Too much is too much. Marketing has evolved to fit the customers needs. As companies begin to look to customers individually, they take note of the many differences among people. In order to differentiate their brand, they try to suit as many of these needs as possible and give you a new choice. A choice catered to you. While this may sound good, marketers must realize the implications of this new technique. If you try and offer a choice for each person in America, you are talking about 300 million different styles of jeans you expect to compete with. Just 300 pairs of jeans frightens me enough. Can you imagine 300 million?

This brings us to Barry’s criticism of choice. How does a customer go to a mall and chose from 30 different stores, all of which offer different brands of jeans, then chose which style of jeans in addition to their choice on store? Paralysis might kick in, where they simply can’t make up their mind and just go home. Or maybe they just settle for a pair, and upon hating their choice, blame themselves for not considering other options. Maybe they had an idea of what they wanted, but can’t find the perfect pair. Can you imagine not being able to find one pair of jeans you like out of three hundred? In each scenario, the customer goes home unhappy, ultimately because they had too much responsibility in making a choice among hundreds. And if the customer is unhappy, the marketer is unhappy.

Barry throws around lines such as “Everything was better when everything was worse,” and “Low expectations are the secret to happiness.” While I don’t think this is 100% correct, it does have some implications for marketers. As opposed to giving customers unlimited amounts of choices, realize that people just want a good pair of jeans. We make enough choices in our own lives, so the last thing we want to do is spend as much time choosing a pair of jeans as choosing a college to go to. Marketers need to focus more on differentiating your brand through the relationships you have with customers, not by overwhelming them with options. Decision making is a difficult part of everyone’s life, and shopping should not be another frustrating part of the equation that is daily living.

Once marketers understand that they have gone too far in trying to enhance the customer decision making process, then they can focus on truly improving their relationships with the customers themselves.