I Regret Everything: The Case for Fewer Consumer Choices
by Justine Piehowski
The whole thing happened in slow motion. I stood in the kitchen and watched as the knife fell from my husband’s hands like a sword falls from the clutches of a knight defeated in battle. He looked down at the bread—one slice jellied and the other empty—and looked up at me. I saw the face of a beaten man and knew immediately:
We’re out of peanut butter.
We’re never out of peanut butter. We’ve always kept a pretty healthy stock of it. It has a long shelf life, it’s a good protein option, and PB&J is the GOAT snack. And we always get the same kind—JIF extra crunchy peanut butter, the one with the blue lid.
But it finally happened... we’d run out. My sweet, hungry husband offered to run to the store to pick up some more. Now, neither of us had really been out of the house in 2 months because of the quarantine, but I was feeling especially stir-crazy that day. So I offered to go instead. I masked up, made sure I had money, my phone, and sanitizer, and set out on my trek to Publix. Surely this would not take long. In and out and back home.
Once I got there, I made a beeline for the peanut butter aisle. JIF extra crunchy, blue lid. JIF extra crunchy, blue lid. I was a woman on a mission.
Then I saw this:
Rows and rows of peanut butter. Creamy, chunky, extra chunky. Big jars, small jars. Natural, organic. JIF, Skippy, Smuckers, Peter Pan, Justin’s, Santa Cruz, Reeses, Smart Balance. Other butters like cashew and almond. There’s even a non-peanut butter peanut butter for allergies and powdered peanut butter for smoothies. I was faced with more than 100 different brands and flavors JUST for that ingredient.
I knew what I came there for, but when actually faced with the opportunity to buy something else, the 100+ options got me and they got me good. I wish I could say I didn’t panic, but...I panicked. All these choices were available, so I couldn’t possibly go with the same peanut butter we always get. Right?
“The culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction.”
As consumers, we are faced daily with endless choices from well-meaning brands who believe a simple idea: More options = Happier customers.
And as a brand, why wouldn’t you believe that? If a brand offers its customer more choices, the customer should be more likely to find what they’re looking for, in the color and shape and size they need it in. Therefore, they’re more likely to spend money with the brand that has what they need, versus the competitor that doesn’t.
But research shows that an abundance of options actually has the opposite effect on buyers. When faced with too many choices, buyers often experience consumer paralysis, increased anxiety, stress, and even buyer’s remorse. And that doesn’t just go for big decisions like picking health insurance or buying a house.
When you think about your last grocery list and all the items on it, you had to make at least one decision on every single item. Maybe you had “milk” on your list. You didn’t just have to choose the brand of milk, but also the percentage of fat and the size of the jug. Or did you want almond or oat or soy or lactose-free? And “carrots” - did you want regular or organic, small bag or large, baby carrots, multicolored carrots, the kind with the stalk still on, carrot sticks, or carrots sliced into circles? And don’t even get me started on laundry detergent - that’s at least a 10-minute thought process, beguiled by aromas of Spring Meadow™ and Snuggle Bear hallucinations.
A number of studies have been done on consumer choice over the past few decades, one of the most famous being the “jam” experiment done in 2000 by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper.
On day one, the researchers set up a display table at a local supermarket with 24 different kinds of jams for purchase. On day two, they set up a different display table at the same supermarket, but with only six different jams for purchase.
Illustration by Rae Keller
While the 24-jam table attracted more attention initially, the table with six jams generated 10 times more sales than the table with 24 options.
Not only that, but in a follow-up to this study, researchers found that customers who did buy from the 24-jam table were less satisfied with their purchase than customers who only chose between six jams. This is amazing to me. I always thought “buyer’s remorse” was something we got after bigger purchase decisions, like when you buy a car and then realize you hate the way the horn sounds, or buy an expensive pair of shoes only to find they are impossible to walk in. But buyer’s remorse is real with the hundreds of small decisions we make too, just on a smaller scale. It’s exhausting to think about, yet we do it many times daily.
We spend so much time deciding on things that in the end, are largely inconsequential. What swimsuit to get for the summer. Whether we should get one inch or two inches off at the hair salon. What movie to watch. With all those choices, we subconsciously believe there has to be a RIGHT choice. How could there not be? The options are endless, so there has to be one that fits our exact need. That’s the fallacy though. While we think we want a lot of choices, being given too many options paralyzes our decision-making and generates either the wrong result or no result at all.
I stood in that peanut butter aisle for what felt like an eternity trying to decide on which jar to take home. I could stick with JIF, and just get a different kind. Maybe the one with Omega-3 in it. Or the Reduced Fat version. There’s also “Simply” JIF, whatever that means. Oh, RX makes a peanut butter now? That would be good. But ooh, what about Smuckers? Their jellies are always good, so they might also make a great peanut butter.
After getting lapped by a number of other peanut butter fans with quicker decision-making skills, I finally realized I was spending too much time. Just pick one and get out of here. I made my selection - the JIF Natural peanut butter. Good protein, less sodium, no preservatives, non-GMO certified. Cool, I think this is the one. Right?
I justified my decision the whole way home. This is the exact same stuff, I thought, but with less preservatives, less salt, less sugar - just totally natural. I bet it even tastes better. Subconsciously, I think I was also justifying the crazy amount of time I spent to make the choice.
I walked into the house and hurried to the kitchen to show my husband what I’d found. He looked at the jar, trying to hide his disappointment. “Were they out of the regular stuff?”
“No,” I said, “but this is all-natural. Same stuff, but healthier!”
He smiled, thanked me, and finished making his sandwich with the new peanut butter.
“The existence of multiple alternatives makes it easy for us to imagine alternatives that don’t exist—alternatives that combine the attractive features of the ones that do exist.”
Schwartz says that choosing well is difficult, and most decisions are multi-dimensional. He recommends asking yourself one question before going into any decision: What do I want?
But think of how complex that question actually is. Knowing what we want means understanding how something is going to make our future selves feel. It’s why none of us have the answer to that classic date night conundrum: “Where do you want to eat?” Not only do you have to know how it’s going to make you feel, but there’s another person in the mix to consider.
Schwartz points out that whenever you eat at a restaurant, or watch a movie, or go to an event, in the end, you either liked it, or you didn’t. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman and colleagues also found that what we remember about those experiences is almost entirely determined by two things - 1. How the experiences felt at their peak (best or worst), and 2. How they felt when they ended.
This is why peer reviews on Yelp are so helpful, and why influencers have made their millions. What do we want? WE DON’T KNOW. Halp.
A few days after my trip to the grocery store, I had a hankering for a PB&J. And oh man I couldn’t wait to try out this new all-natural stuff. I realized I never actually got a review of it from my husband. I’m sure he liked it, I thought. I got the jelly from the fridge, walked to the cabinet, got out the bread, and grabbed for the natural peanut butter. But something was in the way.
It was a fresh new jar of JIF extra crunchy peanut butter. With the blue lid. All I could do was smile at that point. Those 100+ decisions and the man still knows what he wants. I admire it.
As a consumer, the best thing we can do for ourselves and our own sanity is to try and limit the number of choices we have to make and narrow down the options we consider. I’ve started doing this over the past few months, and with the exception of the Great Peanut Butter Panic of 2020, it feels like it’s working. As a consumer, I’m starting to trust myself to make quick, decisive moves on the little things, which in turn has made more time in my day. The time I can spend connecting with the people around me, relaxing, and practicing gratitude for the ability to have choices in the first place. Take it from someone whose past was filled with a LOT of pros-and-cons lists for a LOT of stupid things - go with your gut, and save your time and energy for those bigger life decisions.
All this talk of PB&J and now I’m hungry. At least I have that jar of natural peanut butter all to myself. Or do I want extra chunky…
Sources:
“The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” by Barry Schwartz | TED Talk: Barry Schwartz
“When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Paper by Sheena Iyengar (Columbia University) and Mark Lepper (Stanford University)
“Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis” Research by Alexander Chernev, Ulf Böckenholt, and Joseph Goodman, in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 26, Issue 2.
