Too Much Stuff!

As Americans, we all give lip-service to the idea that more choices are always better. Choice in a consumer setting is trotted out time and time again as a good thing. Whenever I ask industry people to list the competitive advantages of indies versus box stores, they offer roughly the same group of benefits: Quality, choice and service in some form are listed. I recall one industry “mouth” saying basically that if people keep buying plants at Walmart, soon the choice of impatiens will be limited only to red and pink.

Between impatiens and pansies there are definitely more colors than necessary for any one garden center – or garden. We’ve turned the garden center into a paint-chip department, with every color and form to satisfy the aesthetic whims of everyone – even the customers that haven’t walked in our doors. Yet. With the worry of the choice-eating zombie haunting my sleep, I’m beginning to wonder if a bit of buyer-restraint at the garden center might be a good thing.

If the average customer makes 85 percent of purchasing decisions on impulse in the garden center, then how much control do we have over that process? What sort of factors influence decisions at the garden center? Quality of displays, store organization, staff training would be among them, surely, but enough has been said (and ignored) on those subjects that I will leave them for another time. Instead, why don’t we consider this notion: Too much choice is hurting our sales.

Jam-packed. Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia University who studies the effect of choice on behavior, provides some interesting research into the benefits – and costs – of choice. The study I found particularly interesting looked at consumer behavior at a gourmet grocery store. This particular store stocks 250 varieties of mustard and 75 different olive oils and 300 jams. That sounded sufficiently like a garden center’s assortment of daylilies, hosta and petunias to me, so it’s a good parallel. The store catered to people who said they liked lots of choice and variety.

Where choices are concerned, we might want quality to trump quantity.

How many hosta varieties does your store market? Very possibly too many.

In the experiment Dr. Iyengar and her team conducted, two different displays of the same brand of specialty jams were set up. Each display was staffed by two people acting as store employees and offering customers samples of as many jams as they’d like to try. The customers were given a coupon for $1 off any of the jams from the display; the coupons were used to track sales after the interaction.

The first display had a “Limited Choice” of six jams, and the second had an “Extensive Choice” of 24. The two most popular and least popular flavors were determined ahead of time and were thrown out, so the choices the customers had were not of the “I need some grape jelly” sort. The two displays were then alternated hourly across several non-holiday weekends so that traffic flow was even.

Just as I expected, the larger “Extensive Choice” display attracted more attention. Of the 242 people who passed by the larger display, 60 percent stopped to sample and inspect the jams. On the “Limited Choice” display, 260 people passed by, but only 40 percent stopped to sample. Both groups tasted, on average, one to two samples before being given their coupon.

However, where these people spent their money ultimately was a surprise.

Of the people who looked at the “Limited Choice” options, 30 percent bought one, but the larger group of people shopping the “Extensive Choice” display were far less motivated – only three percent purchased. Based on the figures the study gave, each jar of jam cost an average of $5, so that means all the “Extensive Choice” model gave the store is $15 in sales, while “Limited Choice” brought in $93 in sales.

Choice can be crippling. It is clear from the study that too many choices, while creating enthusiasm initially, can actually serve to dampen the motivation to buy as the consumer becomes overwhelmed with options. The numbers seem consequential when applied to the bottom line of a garden center. Does the sheer number of plant varieties available to the average consumer looking for a shrub for a foundation planting or color for some tired patio containers overwhelm her? 

 The research points us in the direction of tightening our choice options. I hear independent garden centers complain that they don’t get new, exclusive varieties ahead of the box stores. But despite a given garden center’s enthusiasm for new plants, orders from the garden center rarely result in large commitments to volume and large displays and focused promotions.

It’s a frustrating problem for indies and breeders alike. Maybe if the garden center would concentrate on fewer new products and stock more volume of more limited varieties, sales would increase overall. I’m sure that Walmart and Home Depot, among others, have figured this out – probably some time ago. Rather than stocking 10 of the 20 newest roses, go for 100 each of two varieties and do a display that showcases your confidence in your selection rather than hedging your bets to the point of paralyzing your customers by drowning them in choices.
Imagine the time you could save just on ordering.

Josh Schneider is a founding partner of Cultivaris, a horticulture consulting firm. E-mail him at josh@cultivaris.com.