Competing with Amazon

Brings up  'Less is More 'book  'Paradox of Choice'  but is that actually true?  Certainly Amazon has shown more assortment is better, much better.   Have they perfected curation?

Less is more’ when competing with Amazon   by Chris Petersen, PhD.

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the IMS Results Count blog.

When is too much choice a bad thing? Brain scientists and psychologists have discovered that too many choices overwhelm our brain. Too many choices become intimidating, frustrating and can result in fewer sales. Amazon.com has literally been creating a “store of everything.” Few retailers can afford to compete with the “more” of everything in Amazon’s ecosystem.

However, retailers can offer customers more relevancy and value by narrowing choice through curation.

Barry Schwatz wrote in “The Paradox of Choice“ in 2004, “We can imagine a point at which the options would be so copious that even the world’s most ardent supporters of freedom of choice would begin to say enough already.”

We have reached enough already. My recent search for “smarthome light bulbs” on Amazon yielded over 5,000 product choices! We as consumers cannot begin to read all of the descriptions, specs and customer reviews. The danger for every retailer, even Amazon, is that we become frustrated, fear that we will make the wrong choice and abandon our cart.

Instead of showing and stocking more, retailers must focus on showing less and leveraging curation at a number of levels: .... "