Paradox Choice

In the book “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz; Chapter 1, we can see how he explains “A Day at the Supermarket” and how he’s faced with so many options that seem to be never ending.Schwartz goes on and explains, “A typical supermarket carries more than 30,000 items”. When we think about it literally, that’s a whole bunch of items, but what Schwartz says next is even more interesting. He goes on to rephrase his earlier statement by adding, “And More than 20,000 new products hit the shelves every year, almost all of them doomed to failure”. Why is it that so many new items are just coming out to be a total disappointment? Well.. it’s definitely not my area of expertise, but I’m willing to bet that the products that do end up being successful end up staying at the store completely while the new items coming in are given chances to see if those items would end up blowing up in popularity for sales.

So what this says about all those items is that it’s a marketing strategy. A strategy where marketplaces as such test multiple new items to see which become popular to keep within the stores, while the others doom in failure. There’s no actual solutions for these products that doom, but rather for them to learn. Obviously the known brands hold all the power as their products are the first to likely be sold. Some implications of this would be that those less likely known brands wouldn’t get the same amount of attention and would get all the fame taken away even though they could be almost the exact same thing, but simply just the different brand. After all, as Schwartz goes on to explain, “Supermarkets are unusual as repositiories for what are called “nondurable goods,” goods that are quickly used and replenished”. 

So in conclusion, a day in the supermarket may overwhelm someone with so many choices, but at the end people will buy products that cost more money as they’re most likely to be guaranteed that fresh sensation, flavor, calories, and fat. Pretty much exactly what Schwartz would say, “But in most other settings, people are out to buy things that cost more money, and that are meant to last. No one wants to buy something that’s gonna end up being cheap and a waste of money or especially something that isn’t gonna last. Even if it’s a couple bucks more, people are willing to buy the bigger, better thing.