Sheena Lyengar: How to make choosing easier

Today I encountered a nice video from Sheena Iyengar on how to organise choicemaking for consumers. Sheena shares her research on choice making and its consequences for product portfolio management and positioning.

In her study it shows that the choice overload we customers are facing doesn't improve our brand engagement, but actually lowers it. In a study in which she compared choicemaking of customers when faced with 24 types of jam or just 6 types, she concluded that customers were 6 times more likely to make a choice in favor of the scenario with 6 types. So choice overload leads to customers not choosing at all.

Sheena gives four tips to enhance choicemaking. These are:
1. Cut choices
When you cut possibilities, people are more likely to make a choice and you will cut costs in your production/distribution process. For example, Head & Shoulders decided to cut their number of kinds of shampoo from 26 to 15 which led to an improvement of sales of 10%.

2. Make it more concrete
Let customers make their choices more vivid in their minds.

3. Categorize
Pre-define choices of customers.

4. Condition for complexity
Build up complexity in choice making. For example a personal customisation site for customers should begin with simple options and build this up to retain the attention of the site visitor