Overchoice effect and helping your brand overcome it

What you offer is offered by every other brand in your niche plus more. How do you make the target pick you?

The overchoice effect, also known as choice overload, is a psychological phenomenon where having too many options can lead to decision paralysis and dissatisfaction with the final choice. This is because when we are presented with too many options, our brains have a hard time processing all of the information and making a decision. A situation that confuses the customer and more than just one brand ends up harming the entire industry.

In India, many people on the internet following the American blueprint started offering courses in social media. While people looked at these courses as a means to enhance their skills, they were well received but as more and more of these courses started to enter the market, people started to perceive them as hungry money-sucking selfish lurkers.

What caused these courses to fall from grace? There were simply too many of them out there for users to see the value in them. And that's what refers to the overchoice effect.

The overchoice effect can have a significant impact on customer satisfaction. For example, a study by Columbia University found that people who were presented with 24 different flavors of jam were less likely to purchase those who were only presented with 6 flavors. This is because the larger selection of jams made it more difficult for people to choose, and they ultimately became overwhelmed and frustrated.

Another study, by the University of California, Berkeley, found that people who were presented with a large selection of products were more likely to be dissatisfied with their purchase than those who were presented with a smaller selection. This is because people tend to have higher expectations for products that they have chosen from a large selection.

The overchoice effect can be particularly problematic in online shopping, where customers are often presented with a vast selection of products. For example, when shopping for a new pair of shoes online, a customer may have to choose from hundreds of different styles, colors, and brands. This can make it very difficult for the customer to make a decision, and they may ultimately be dissatisfied with their purchase.

And now to the million-dollar question, how can brands overcome the overchoice effect?

The answer? Keep your brand as fresh as possible and when someone catches up, change the narrative.

Changing the narrative does not mean changing what you do, but changing the way you say what you do

Being bold in your brand voice.

Finding a new talking angle.

Finding a customer's pain and satisfying it with higher satisfaction.

In a world where there are too many solutions for the same problem, presentation, and brand narratives are critical to finding your brand a voice in a deafening world. As soon as the customer perceives you to be from a lurker gang, you will be seen as a predator and the customer will go into hiding.