Happiness
I heard an interesting interview this morning from the guys at Project Canvas - beautifully described on wiki "Project Canvas is the working title for an attempt to create an open, internet-connected television platform built on common standards, by the United Kingdom's terrestrial broadcasters BBC, Channel 4, ITV plc and communications companies Arqiva, BT and TalkTalk." The effort behind Project canvas makes a lot of sense except I have to ask why the BBC would ever create a distraction from one of the best UXs in TV today - the iPlayer? Why create the distraction of choice?
Which brings me nicely to my point - choices. In the interview, a new piece of research was referenced, which showed that while we would all agree choice is a good thing, our happiness around choice drops dramatically when the options increase beyond three. As soon as a fourth option is introduced, we start to get agitated and stressed.
I'm sure the immediate response among marketers will be to consider how to act based on the implications of this finding. For retailers, the question will be 'should we develop stores that are defined by the top 3 sellers in any category?' I believe some store concepts like this exist already, driven by real estate pressures more than simplifying a consumer's journey. For CPG marketers, the challenge is not so straightforward. In my experience with CPG clients, shelf dominance is one of the key drivers of their success and that dominance comes from creating multiple SKUs. Dominating the shelf is one of the key interactive plays for a brand. As a consumer, you are in that shelf territory because you are addressing a need directly related to that section of the shelf and the dominance of one brand versus another can lead to the sell. You are looking for men's grooming products and you see a sea of red - all Old Spice products - you are bound to choose one of them, which results in a transaction between brand and consumer. So what can marketers do with this information? Perhaps there's a way to make navigation simpler. A good example of this is what I saw Clinique do recently by combining the 3 key stages of better facial skin in one convenient pack. A facial cleanser, a toner and a moisturizer - labeled 1, 2, 3. A simple packaging approach that presented itself as a complete solution. To me, this looks like a packaging solution that's driven by a consumer question - 'What do I need to do to cleanse my face correctly?' Cosmetic brands have been doing this well for some time. What could a cereal brand do? Maybe Cheerios could make life easier by indicating what are the three most popular varieties or better still reflect volume demand by the size of packaging - the three big ones are the most popular. Maybe this happens already but it's not obvious. At a personal level, keep choices down to three for a happier life.
