6 ms·

The Guardian is reading far too much into Tesco's actions. Following the Paradox of Choice, the effect was widely studied and found to not be particularly robus

The Guardian is reading far too much into Tesco's actions. Following the Paradox of Choice, the effect was widely studied and found to not be particularly robust. The classic jam study (cited by this article) failed to replicate. There are various circumstances when having more choices increases sales as well (e.g., a higher priced option that no one takes can cause more sales of the low priced choice). Even the author of "Paradox of Choice" admits the science is far from settled. I've been to Tesco. From a consumer's perspective, it's amazing - I really wish I had a place like Tesco where I am. Most likely the reason Tesco is reducing choices is because stocking more SKUs is expensive, but at the end of the day the customer buys the same quantity of cheese. Choice is fantastic for the consumer, particularly the consumer with minority tastes. If you are an Indian or Nigerian person living in the UK and you are hungry for some home food, Tesco's got you covered. I'm not even going to discuss the blatant cheerleading for state monopolies and Corbyn. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-paradox-of-choic/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-parad... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabd... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-...

djaychela 11y ago
I'm not sure I'd agree. Personally I don't find choice debilatating, but I know plenty of people who do - my girfriend finds it very difficult to make choices, and has to research things to the Nth degree to ensure she's not making a wrong one, and a lot of the kids I teach find options anxiety to be a real problem. However, when faced with an area where there is choice but I have little information (such as buying a given spice in Tesco and there are 3 seemingly equivalent choices) I have experienced this. I'd agree about the tagging on of the Corbyn bit at the end - I don't think it has anything to do with the article - but I'm not sure that the high priced choice you cite is necessarily the same thing?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I also know plenty of people who find lack of choice debilitating. Ramanujan - an Indian living in the UK was debilitated by the absence of Idlis. (In the modern world, Tesco has him covered.) I'm certainly unhappy in northwest Delhi when I can't find a decent dosa, pasta or croissant [1]. Minorities exist, and some of them really need those choices that paralyze your girlfriend. I think a better solution is for your girlfriend to learn coping skills than for my ex-girlfriend to suffer with Indian shampoo that doesn't work for African hair. [1] Or at least such things are 1.5 hours away in Khan market.
  - stdbrouw 11y ago
    But this is not lack of choice. It's lack of availability. Wouldn't one good brand of pasta solve most of your pasta needs? Do you really feel like you'd still be unhappy unless you had 10 shapes of pasta each made from one of three different grains, each available from two or three different brands?
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      The fact that I don't eat fusilli very much doesn't mean that other people don't. The thought experiment surrounding the removal of choice is not the removal of choices that other people make. It's the removal of your favorite choices, particularly if you are a minority.
  - cobweb 11y ago
    I assume you are referring to the mathmatician. It's odd because reading what you said makes me think I'd rather a diversity of product types, but I care less about having more than one of each type. Having said that, Tesco stock a Jamaican stout (Dragon), and for about a year, they didn't stock it. And it intrinsically annoyed me. They did replace with a like product after a while (Guiness version), but I didn't like that. Which makes me aware that you can get fussy over different brands/tastes. Beer is a good example actually. There was something that really bugged me about being offered the product and then having it withdrawn, it's replacement wasn't enough.
cmdkeen 11y ago
The SKU cost is worth exploring the context that Tesco is facing massive pressure from the lower end of the market in Lidl and Aldi. Separately it also allows for better bargaining power with the suppliers, fewer brands on the shelves = Tesco having greater competition between brands to get on the shelves.
- cobweb 11y ago
  And they have their own brands: a basic and a finest. Less choice may be a win for them.
bko 11y ago
Choice is certainly under-rated and we take it for granted in the Western world. Supermarket choice is a triumph of capitalism and choice should be celebrated. Consumer choice may have even been a major driver in taking down centrally planned economies. Boris Yeltsin while visiting a supermarket in Houston: > Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.” About a year after the Russian leader left office, a Yeltsin biographer later wrote that on the plane ride to Yeltsin’s next destination, Miami, he was despondent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the plentiful food at the grocery store and what his countrymen had to subsist on in Russia. In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. Two years later, he left the Communist Party and began making reforms to turn the economic tide in Russia. You can blame those frozen Jell-O Pudding pops. “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.” [0] [0] http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/ http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-...
- cobweb 11y ago
  > Supermarket choice is a triumph of capitalism and choice should be celebrated. And yet they were found to be price rigging in the UK.
  - 13thLetter 11y ago
    Does that therefore prove that having lots of choices in a supermarket is bad?
    - cobweb 11y ago
      No it doesn't prove it, it was just a remark.
rodgerd 11y ago
> Most likely the reason Tesco is reducing choices is because stocking more SKUs is expensive Many supermarket chains also charge producers for shelf space, so dropping products and cranking the rates charged for placement is a great revenue stream. Awful for the customer and for producers, of course.

djaychela 11y ago

I'm not sure I'd agree. Personally I don't find choice debilatating, but I know plenty of people who do - my girfriend finds it very difficult to make choices, and has to research things to the Nth degree to ensure she's not making a wrong one, and a lot of the kids I teach find options anxiety to be a real problem. However, when faced with an area where there is choice but I have little information (such as buying a given spice in Tesco and there are 3 seemingly equivalent choices) I have experienced this. I'd agree about the tagging on of the Corbyn bit at the end - I don't think it has anything to do with the article - but I'm not sure that the high priced choice you cite is necessarily the same thing?

yummyfajitas 11y ago
I also know plenty of people who find lack of choice debilitating. Ramanujan - an Indian living in the UK was debilitated by the absence of Idlis. (In the modern world, Tesco has him covered.) I'm certainly unhappy in northwest Delhi when I can't find a decent dosa, pasta or croissant [1]. Minorities exist, and some of them really need those choices that paralyze your girlfriend. I think a better solution is for your girlfriend to learn coping skills than for my ex-girlfriend to suffer with Indian shampoo that doesn't work for African hair. [1] Or at least such things are 1.5 hours away in Khan market.
- stdbrouw 11y ago
  But this is not lack of choice. It's lack of availability. Wouldn't one good brand of pasta solve most of your pasta needs? Do you really feel like you'd still be unhappy unless you had 10 shapes of pasta each made from one of three different grains, each available from two or three different brands?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    The fact that I don't eat fusilli very much doesn't mean that other people don't. The thought experiment surrounding the removal of choice is not the removal of choices that other people make. It's the removal of your favorite choices, particularly if you are a minority.
- cobweb 11y ago
  I assume you are referring to the mathmatician. It's odd because reading what you said makes me think I'd rather a diversity of product types, but I care less about having more than one of each type. Having said that, Tesco stock a Jamaican stout (Dragon), and for about a year, they didn't stock it. And it intrinsically annoyed me. They did replace with a like product after a while (Guiness version), but I didn't like that. Which makes me aware that you can get fussy over different brands/tastes. Beer is a good example actually. There was something that really bugged me about being offered the product and then having it withdrawn, it's replacement wasn't enough.

cmdkeen 11y ago

The SKU cost is worth exploring the context that Tesco is facing massive pressure from the lower end of the market in Lidl and Aldi. Separately it also allows for better bargaining power with the suppliers, fewer brands on the shelves = Tesco having greater competition between brands to get on the shelves.

cobweb 11y ago
And they have their own brands: a basic and a finest. Less choice may be a win for them.

bko 11y ago

Choice is certainly under-rated and we take it for granted in the Western world. Supermarket choice is a triumph of capitalism and choice should be celebrated. Consumer choice may have even been a major driver in taking down centrally planned economies. Boris Yeltsin while visiting a supermarket in Houston: > Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.” About a year after the Russian leader left office, a Yeltsin biographer later wrote that on the plane ride to Yeltsin’s next destination, Miami, he was despondent. He couldn’t stop thinking about the plentiful food at the grocery store and what his countrymen had to subsist on in Russia. In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. Two years later, he left the Communist Party and began making reforms to turn the economic tide in Russia. You can blame those frozen Jell-O Pudding pops. “When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.” [0] [0] http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/ http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-...

cobweb 11y ago
> Supermarket choice is a triumph of capitalism and choice should be celebrated. And yet they were found to be price rigging in the UK.
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  Does that therefore prove that having lots of choices in a supermarket is bad?
  - cobweb 11y ago
    No it doesn't prove it, it was just a remark.

rodgerd 11y ago

> Most likely the reason Tesco is reducing choices is because stocking more SKUs is expensive Many supermarket chains also charge producers for shelf space, so dropping products and cranking the rates charged for placement is a great revenue stream. Awful for the customer and for producers, of course.