Dec 16th 2010
Wheel a trolley down the aisle of any modern Western hypermarket, and
the choice of all sorts is dazzling. The average American supermarket
now carries 48,750 items, according to the Food Marketing Institute,
more than five times the number in 1975. Britain's Tesco stocks 91
different shampoos, 93 varieties of toothpaste and 115 of household
cleaner. Carrefour's hypermarket in the Paris suburb of Montesson, a
hangar-like place filled with everything from mountain bikes to foie
gras, is so vast that staff circulate on rollerblades.
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As options multiply, there may be a point at which the effort required
to obtain enough information to be able to distinguish sensibly between
alternatives outweighs the benefit to the consumer of the extra choice.
“At this point”, writes Barry Schwartz in “The Paradox of Choice”,
“choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to
tyrannise.” In other words, as Mr Schwartz puts it, “the fact that some choice is good doesn't necessarily mean that more choice is better.”
