Does More Choice Equal More Profits?
Here at the BNET Intercom we've posted several times about the increasing tendency of marketers to target a multitude of products to specific market niches rather than aiming for broad appeal (among those posts is today's look at Nike's new shoes for Native Americans.) The result of all this niche marketing is the variety of beverages at your local coffee shop, or the seemingly endless shelf of pasta sauces to choose from at the supermarket. This splintering of the market raises a couple of questions: from the corporate perspective, does more choice equal more profits? And from the consumer perspective, does all this choice make us happy?
Today the PsychBlog pairs up two videos of TED talks to investigate the issue. In one, Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point" and "Blink," argues that more choice does in fact equal greater profits, and explains exactly how. In the other, Barry Schwartz, Swarthmore College psychologist and author of "The Paradox of Choice," argues that all that choice is making us really miserable.
Of course they could both be right. Choice could be both profitable and misery inducing.