Marketing Tips, Misc

If You Want Your Prospects to Buy More, Offer Less

It sounds counter-intuitive. Surely if you want people to buy more, you have to offer them more? Well actually, research has discovered that too much choice has the opposite effect.

Have you ever gone to a restaurant and looked at the menu and just felt overwhelmed at the amount of choice? Sometimes there are so many things that you like the sound of on the menu that you are worried about making the wrong decision! We have all experienced buyer’s remorse in a restaurant when a friend’s dish turns up and you wish you had ordered that.

However, a restaurant is an unusual scenario. For one, you are usually with other people (unless your first name is Billy or Norman) and you have pre-booked your seats. Therefore, in this captive audience scenario of a restaurant, it is unlikely that you will abstain from making a decision.

In lots of other buying situations though, it is proven that too much choice actually makes it less likely that someone will purchase. Imagine browsing online or within a shop and comparing lots of alternatives. Many of us would walk away safe in the knowledge that we hadn’t made the wrong decision…. simply because we avoided making a decision.

Now, although the bigger display generated more interest, people were found far less likely to purchase a jar of jam than they would have from the smaller display. The results were not marginal either. The smaller display resulted in it being 10 times more likely that a purchase would be made.

This isn’t all about foods and jams though. Similar exercises have taken place across other sectors such as clothing and the results have been the same!

1. When people want to make a quick and easy choice
2. When the product is complex (so fewer choices)
3. When it is difficult to compare alternatives
4. When consumers don’t have clear preferences.

So, think about your own business. Is your offering simple or are you over-complicating the purchase decision? How much competitive choice is there in your marketplace – is there anything you could do to make comparison difficult? Are you making buying process as quick and easy as possible?

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Ian Kirk

Founder at Opportunity Marketing

Ian is the founder of Opportunity Marketing marketing, with over 18 years of experience in successfully setting up marketing departments, creating marketing strategies and implementing these strategies across a wide number of SME companies in both the B2B and B2C sectors through a variety of channels.

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