Leftovers
The Smarty-Pants Are Offering Less
Choice used to be something desired and now it’s something maddening and confusing. Walk into your local super market and you’ll find roughly 30,000 different choices. That’s ten times more than you would have had in the 1950’s. Everything is, “with extra this”, “minus that,” “now comes in twenty five brilliant colors.” Is this really what we asked for when we as a consumer base said we want more choices? For the majority of us the answer is hell no. It’s become too complicated to buy anything these days. What people need now more than ever is certainly less complications in their lives. The dilemma of decision is turning off consumers and leading them back to the simplest, most easily deciphered item they can find. And find easily of course.
If you’re thinking about entering the household cleaning products market because you have this great idea to add Kiwi to your surface cleaner stop there, right now! Is this giving the consumer a fair deal or just attempting to put one over on them? Is there really a need for this or even a significant market? If you’re product is too niche-focused you are playing a risky game with retailers too, who would rather kill you than stock you. They’ve been overloaded and most will refuse to stock any item that doesn’t appeal to at least 80% of their customers. They just don’t have the room on the shelf.
"Consumers will accept products that answer their needs and help them," says Larry Light, a brand management consultant in Stamford, Connecticut. "The products that won’t last long are those that have no reason for being in the first place."
Light insists, "The age of disposable brands is over." "We are in a new era when manufacturers are realizing that the return on investment lies in better brand management." The old idea of simply owning as much shelf space as possible has proven to fail. Manufacturers learned that 20 percent of their stock keeping units (SKUs) accounted for only five percent of sales. Instead of introducing new brands, more manufactures made their lines better (and fewer) and sales increased notably.
Light maintains that sales are up when SKUs are limited. Those out there in the trenches said the concept of fewer products was more effective. Sales people now actually had the time to talk about those few products where as before they were dealing with far too many to sell. The numbers were better, consumers were happier. With fewer choices they were able to see the real differences between brands. Touch and feel and decide. The old days of confusion being helpful to the brightest shiniest object were over.
In this case we see the Light: “Customers are more sophisticated and better educated than ever before,” he says, “and they want to make intelligent choices, but with too many choices, they can’t."