Category: Sales And Marketing

Something I need to work on. For those who don’t know, I’m more of a right-hand man than a front-man. What this means for me is that I’m good for a "on the one hand there’s this" and "on the other hand there’s that" type rants. Doesn’t mean I’m a slouch for having a definitive opinion, but for persons that have played a facilitative role in consulting or other areas, being balanced and level-headed comes with the turf. I’m familiar with the scenario where the client CEO confronts you in the elevator and you need to give the 30-second pitch on where the engagement is at while at the same time justifying your existence. All said, giving an executive business summary is a bit different from "speaking quotably", the latter which is required for talking with press reporters.

Ford Harding, in his book "Rain Making" (a very good book for those looking to hone their skills in attracting new clients in the professional services or consulting world), has some good examples of speaking quotably (categorization is mine):

• Colorful words – "… like Bambi caught in the headlights …"
• Cliches – "This is only round one."
• Dramatic – "That issue is as dead as the flat earth theory."
• Despair – "Many will never work again."

This past Friday I was called by a reporter as related to an article on corporate blogging just being finalized for one of the major East coast newspapers. The reporter was extremely friendly, smart, nice, and precise about her work. Have no idea whether the statements I made will be used, but it made me realize I have something to work on.

Caught off guard I was. Use this encounter as a signal I will. Make improvements I shall. Have any thoughts do you?

I left off my last post by asking why having an increased
number of choices works well at Starbucks, but seems to cause confusion when
buying jam. The difference often comes down to knowing our own preferences. For
everyday decisions with immediate feedback, like buying coffee, we are able to
establish our favorites relatively easily. And if the wrong choice is made, the
cost is low and we’ll only have to live with it for about an hour. Choosing the
wrong jam may stick with you a little longer – perhaps a month, depending on
how often you enjoy jam on toast. And consider really big decisions like where
to put your retirement savings – it’s a decision made rarely, with no immediate
feedback and very high stakes for choosing wrong. Too much choice can certainly
be overwhelming in such an environment.

Luckily, we can propose solutions for individuals
overwhelmed by choice. We can find ways to provide faster feedback so poor
choices can be corrected quickly. We can also help consumers deal with choice
by offering more information and assistance in discovering the relevant
attributes and tradeoffs, thus helping them discover their own preferences. Or
we can provide a hierarchy of choice, so that as a consumer’s preferences
become more refined over time, more customization becomes available to him. For
example, we can offer starter packs of a variety of small jam jars, or ask more
questions about when and where you eat jam, or devise rating scales that help
you better quantify your jam preferences. Although greater choice has the
downside of sometimes being overwhelming, it is a downside we can manage, and
the extra effort is often worth it.

But with all the focus on how overwhelming too much choice
can be, a different downside to unlimited choice and increased control has been
somewhat overlooked: the threat of temptation. (This also happens to be the
aspect of choice that I find most interesting.) Think again of the buffet
table. Once you overcome your initial surprise at just how much there is to
choose from and you begin loading your plate, you face a new problem: how to
know when to stop. It’s hard not to overeat with so many good options in front
of you! As a result, many weight-conscious individuals have devised personal
rules to constrain themselves, such as only a certain number of trips to the
buffet line per visit, or a certain number of buffet restaurant visits per
month, or even no visiting buffet restaurants at all.

It isn’t hard to think of lots of other self-control rules
that people impose on themselves to rein in the temptation that comes with
increased choice. Shoppers put budgets on how much they can spend during a trip
to the mall. They vow to visit only the store that carries the item they intend
to buy that day, without making any other stops. They only allow themselves to
buy tempting grocery product if they’re on sale or have a coupon. One of my
personal favorites – they vow to drink certain bottles of wine only on special
occasions. Unfortunately, although these rules work well to control
temptations, they can also make the consumer worse off overall. Untold bottles
of special wine have gone bad waiting for the special occasion that never
arrived.

So how do we, as marketers, find ways to help consumers deal with the increased temptations that come with increased choice? And is it even in our interest to do so? In my next post, I’ll talk about how companies who are aware of these self-control problems have found some creative ways to help consumers save themselves from their own bad behaviors.

Suzanne Shu

As promised last week by Steve, I’m going to be
guest-blogging a little this week on some topics that I’ve been thinking about
as part of my research efforts. My job description says that I’m a marketing
professor, so you’ll see that these musings are heavily oriented toward a
consumer behavior view of the world. But my training is in behavioral economics
and decision theory, so I’ll borrow heavily from those fields as well.

Ask any consumer about the amount of choice he or she would
like in their daily lives, and you are likely to hear a preference for
unlimited choice and complete control. So it is no surprise that consumer
trends have been toward increased choice, even to the point of completely
customized offerings. On the grocery shelves we’ve seen an explosion of variety
– you can now find dozens of types of toothbrushes (an item that used to be
considered more of a commodity), along with new varieties of pasta sauces, snack
crackers, and salsas. The old “cup of joe” has been replaced by a completely
individualized venti decaf triple shot
hazelnut nonfat latte at your local Starbucks. Online, you can visit an
auto manufacturer’s website and customize a long list of options for your new
car, even down to the unique paint job. And in restaurants, perhaps nowhere is
unlimited choice better represented than the buffet line that seemingly
stretches for miles. We are also seeing the trend for increased choice and
control affect public policy, as it becomes part of the debate around
privatizing social security. Proponents of privatization point out the benefits
of allowing individuals control over their own investments, a sentiment many
find enticing.

But at the same time as the number of choices has increased,
dissenting voices have come forward to point out the downside of the trend.
Perhaps most vocal has been psychology Professor Barry Schwartz, author of the 2004
book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Schwartz pulls together a long
list of academic research in psychology and marketing to demonstrate that too
much choice can leave consumers overwhelmed and overstressed. Consider, for
example, an often-cited study by Professor Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and some of her colleagues. They set
up a jam-tasting table in a grocery store, stocked with either six flavors or
twenty-four flavors. With only six flavors, shoppers were able to choose a
favorite, and jam sales went up. With twenty-four flavors, shoppers felt
overwhelmed and often left without buying any jam. In other words, too much
choice ended up being a bad thing.

But is too much choice always a problem? Why does more choice work well at Starbucks, but not when buying jam? I’ll address this conundrum in the next installment, plus offer some prescriptive advice for dealing with increased choice. And then we’ll consider whether there’s another "dark side" of increased choice that we also need to pay attention to. Stay tuned!

Suzanne Shu