Gut Check
Streak 0
No. 032000CaliforniaA supermarket

The jam stand

A jam tasting stand was set up in a supermarket. At some hours it offered 24 kinds of jam; at others, only 6.

Everyone who stopped at the stand got a discount coupon. Then the researchers counted how many people actually bought a jar.

You first

Standing in front of 24 flavors, what would you do?

This answer is hypothetical; it is not the same as what you would do in a real lab.

Which stand led to more sales?

Original result

The 24 flavors drew more attention: about 60% of passers-by stopped, versus 40% for 6 flavors. But sales went the other way: only 3% of visitors to the 24-flavor stand bought jam, compared with about 30% at the 6-flavor stand.

What we know today

This study made “choice overload” famous around the world. But a 2010 meta-analysis combining dozens of studies found that the average effect was close to zero. Lots of options sometimes freeze people and sometimes don’t; the effect seems to appear when the decision is hard, the options are complex or time is short.

The surprising part

One of the most-quoted marketing experiments in the world turns out to hold only under certain conditions.

Sources

  1. Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When choice is demotivating. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995–1006. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995
  2. Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Can there ever be too many options? Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409–425. doi.org/10.1086/651235

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