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To read Part I of our series on LUXURY CONSUMPTION...
"Part I. Will the Real Luxury Consumer Please Stand Up?" Takes up the important question of whether or not there is a certain type of identifiable category of luxury consumer.
For more Hartman Group articles on CONSUMPTION PRACTICES, click here...
December 27, 2002 "Re-Thinking Our Traditional Notion of the Mass Marketplace: The Emergence of a New Paradigm" - Part II, Harvey Hartman
December 20, 2002"Re-Thinking
Our Traditional Notion of the Mass Marketplace: What Happened
to the Mass Market?" - Part I, Harvey Hartman
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StumbleUponRethinking Our Understanding Of Luxury Consumption: Part II
PART II. when less is more, and more is stress:
thoughts on the problem of excessive consumer choice
Recently analysts and critics of luxury consumption practices have begun to target the issue of choice, often raising some version of the general question, "Do we really need all of these choices?" So when we head to the store to pick up the fixin's for a salad, is it really necessary to choose from between 13 different types of lettuce, 8 kinds of Parmesan cheese and 85 different brands of vinegar and oil? Likewise, while our parents were content to choose between Maytag and Whirlpool washing machines, we now face a dizzying array of options, configurations and designer colors (front load, top load, no agitation, subsonic, etc.). This situation has forced many analysts to proclaim, "When is enough enough?"
The tenor of these critiques reasons that (a) because we have too many options thrown at us when we enter retail environments or peruse online catalogs, we are (b) being goaded into making fine distinctions about things we don't want to make fine distinctions about, with the result being (c) marked consumer alienation and apathy. In short, too much choice is a bad thing. For example, when we head to the department store to grab a new pair of jeans, we may encounter 5 to 8 brands, each offering 10 different "cuts," (loose fit, comfort fit, baggy, extended comfort, etc.), with 5 different fade levels (stone washed, acid washed, etc.). In such scenarios of "unwarranted distinction," analysts speculate that we quickly reach a "saturation point," responding with, at best, apathy and, at worst, marked aversion.
And while no doubt many of us can think of moments when we've reacted like this, the question remains, are such moments generalizable to the entire range of shopping contexts and scenarios. That is, for every situation in which we've truly felt burdened by the extensive array of choice, can we not remember one (or likely more) scenarios in which we relished the amount of options available to us?
At The Hartman Group, we've always believed that modern consumers are curious shape shifters drifting amid a sea of everyday contexts. That is, we react very differently according to the product world at hand, to the occasion for our shopping and to the retail environment in which we find that product world. This behavioral shifting is not due to a unique personality orientation or some unmet emotional need; rather, it is culturally situated. Another way of saying this is to suggest that such behavioral shifting is based largely on how we use different kinds of products in distinct ways in our everyday lives. What drives our shape shifting are learned, socially reinforced orientations that affect why we do or do not care about highly differentiated denim jean offerings, for example. With this in mind, we offer the following maxim on the subject of choice, a maxim that we feel accounts for the apparent challenges posed by choice while simultaneously allowing that in most scenarios choice is a very good thing.
THG CHOICE MAXIM: Our threshold for accepting choice is lowest when we are shopping as marginal enthusiasts of a particular world of consumer products.
Moreover, our research highlights two specific contexts in which consumers are most likely to be shopping as marginal enthusiasts of a particular world - and hence be most sensitive to "too much choice."
General disinterest: In some cases, consumers are simply disinterested in the activities associated with the product world at hand (e.g., "Look, I'm merely a point-and-shoot 'holiday,' sort of photographer who doesn't want to be burdened by all of these choices.")
Occasion: In other instances, consumers may be shopping for a particular occasion where they do not have the time or the desire to engage their customary enthusiasm. (e.g., "I'm a pretty serious amateur photographer, but for this weekend canoeing trip a disposable camera is more practical and 'good enough' for the usual, smiley group shots."). Meanwhile, other occasions may be more likely to garner a wider range of enthusiasm and differentiation because they connect to more culturally salient moments in our lives. Cocktail parties, weddings and celebrations, these are all "moments that matter," in which it becomes much easier to justify our obsessive preoccupations with photography (not surprisingly, these are among the most common occasions to hire a professional photographer!)
Making Choice Work
To summarize, we believe the emotional experience of being overwhelmed by choice is not the fault of the marketplace for producing too many minutely differentiated or redundant products but rather, the fault of poorly conceived retail experiences that can't respond, dynamically, to consumers' varying degrees of enthusiasm for the product worlds they offer. Here are the three most common retail blunders that can overwhelm marginal enthusiasts - and create a needless feeling of excessive choice.
- Too Many Layers of Differentiation on Display: Instead of compassionate condescension - featuring two or three well-placed, functionally different, options for newbies - many retailers inadvertently goad consumers, through excessive at-shelf differentiation, into embodying the purchase behaviors of hard-core enthusiasts. The result is that people feel overwhelmed and ignorant - and then frustrated.
Lesson: Hide the core products and create a sense of mystery and buzz about them. Those who know enough to understand them deserve a special showing.
- Too Many Brands Making Similar Claims: In addition, specialty retail stores often display too many brands of product with identical specifications, creating a needless sense of clutter for marginal enthusiasts.
Lesson: Unless the store or product in question is targeted primarily to hard core enthusiasts, limit at shelf brand diversity.
- Retail Staff Who Don't Know How and When to Evangelize: Specialty retailers, especially, often believe their mission is to evangelize their own hard-core enthusiasm to anyone who enters. This often intimidates and confuses marginal enthusiasts, who are more numerous and equally willing to spend.
Lesson: Sizing up customers as they approach with clever questioning is critical before sales staff offer any help. Without pitching, sales staff should function as docents, helping to manage sensory overload by tapping into the consumer's felt need for the product at hand and taking them to a limited array of products that meet that need. Our research suggests consumers much prefer such "customized retail assistance" to the constant dispensing of specialized expertise to all who enter.
Part I >> Part II
