Too Many Choices Are Too Confusing

I said in my last book and earlier in this one: never change a great tagline. Never, never, never.

Back to Reeves's point—if you need more convincing there is plenty of scientific research that shows again and again that too many choices confronting consumers just serve to overwhelm them and they react by not responding at all. There is a famous study that Malcolm Gladwell lectures on regarding a supermarket that offered free samples of various jams during weekend shopping hours. Whenever the supermarket set up a sample table of 3 different jams, a steady stream of shoppers would stop at the display and sample the 3 jams. But when the store offered 10 different jams, just one or two shoppers stopped at the free ...

Get Steal These Ideas!: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.