The Psychology of Choosing Easier in Marketing  

Making choice in this age has never been that difficult. For some people, making choice is way more difficult in a daily basis. Imagine you have to choose from twenty variety of burgers at Wendy’s and sixteen variety of coffee at Starbucks. What choices do you have when you’re all out of options?

At this point, choice is hard. Some decisions will never be easy. Think of Neo from The Matrix, faced with the option to swallow the red pill and discover a harsh reality, or take the blue pill and stick with a comfortable fantasy.

In sales and marketing, there are concrete, actionable ways to make the buying process easier for their prospects. This piece is cited from “How to Make Choosing Easier,” here are Iyengar’s four lessons for how to take the pain out of decision-making.

1. Cut

Less is more. People are less likely to buy if they are faced with choice overload. Solution? Balance the enough number of choice provided to attract buyers in the first place. When Proctor & Gamble cut their Head & Shoulders line from 26 products to 15, the organization saw a 10% increase in sales. This is same with marketing platform. Provided enough option for new customers to avoid them from being confused. Plus, no further queries can be made with few options.

2. Make things concrete

“In order for people to understand the differences between choices, they have to be able to understand the consequences associated with each choice,” Iyengar said. “The consequences need to be felt in a vivid sort of way.”

Buyers need to view the product in their visceral level and as that, they will be more likely to buy it.

3. Categorize

Choice overload is chaotic. To prevent this, categorizing the choice will prevent choice overload.

“If I show you 600 magazines and divided them up into 10 categories, versus 400 magazines in 20 categories, you believe that I have given you more choices and a better choosing experience if I gave you the 400 than if I gave you the 600,” Iyengar said. “The categories tell me how to tell them apart.”

This make sense when buyer need immediate choosing.

4. Condition to complexity

Another way to deal with categorization is customization. Well this method depends, adding a variety of choice collectively summing it up in one choice make buyer see it as being personalize choice. Thus, the sense of choice of power in a choice from a buyer will be realized.