It’s been widely known that excessive choice could make a consumer walk away without a purchase. I never expected I’d find myself in a similar situation in a category I thought I knew well.

I needed a new razor so during my weekly round of grocery shopping I stopped by Gillette display in a local supermarket. This is what I saw:

These days if you’d like a Gillette’s best performing razor, which is 5 blades Fusion family, the choice is between: ProShield, ProShield Chill, ProShield Power, ProGlide, ProGlide Power, Gillette Fusion (without any further extensions) and ProGlide Styler. When you read “Gillette Fusion ProShield Chill” once, it already feels mildly unclear. When you have to read seven of them and to figure out the difference, you’re seriously confused.

“Ok, the difference between ProShield and ProGlide is lubrication, got it. How important is it? What’s the price difference? What does “Chill” do? Are all the blades now interchangeable? Why Styler is branded ProGlide, while the most advanced seems to be the ProShield?  Are there just three handle designs and sub-brands change, depending on blades’ (cartridges) features?” With all these and other questions running through my mind, I realized I’m seriously running out of time as I’m only half-way through my shopping list. A relaxing thought that I didn’t have to buy a razor this time almost made me deflect and walk away. I used to work in Gillette, so acknowledging a defeat was not an option. Minutes later I was proudly pushing my cart with a Gillette razor in it. I wonder how many men in my situation just left, hoping sooner or later to receive one of those razors as a gift from a friendly female.

Too much jam

There has been a lot of studies about choice overload. Psychologist Barry Schwartz coined the phrase “Paradox of Choice” to describe his consistent findings that, while increased choice allows us to achieve objectively better results, it also leads to greater anxiety, indecision, paralysis and dissatisfaction.

One of the first studies in the field is famous jam experiment (full results here) conducted by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper. Basically, it was found out that consumers were 10 times (!) more likely to make a purchase, when the number of variants on display was reduced from 24 to 6 (3% vs 30% purchase rate). Less choice, more sales.

Steve Jobs is right. Again!

Since then, other studies have supported these findings, with subjects ranging from chocolates to 401(k) plans. Along with product range, such simplification seems to work for pricing as well. Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu in their HBR article describe their online music store experiment, in which half the participants were told that the store would charge $1.29 for current hits, $1.19 for soundtracks, $1.09 for classical music, 99 cents for country, Latin, and jazz and 89 cents for everything else. The other half was told that every download would cost $1.29. Those offered a uniform price of $1.29 were 31% more likely to buy and on average anticipated buying 1.08 songs more per month. This would mean spending $49.10 a year on music rather than $25.95 – an increase in revenue of about 89%!

In case with iTunes Steve Jobs explained that to charge a uniform price was not only fair, but also got customers to think about the benefit of iTunes’ huge selection, rather than to focus on saving money. Again, simplification in action!

It’s all relative

Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman who, together with Amos Tversky, established the field of behavioral economics, suggested that we have two systems: old, automatic, intuitive, fast, reflex-like and effortless System 1 and newer, rational, slow, logic-based System 2. Whenever system 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed processing. As a result of these two systems working together we develop simplification mechanisms – heuristics – that involve associating new information with existing patterns or thoughts, rather than creating new patterns for each new experience. There are around twenty heuristics described. One of the best known is probably anchoring, i.e. relying on a first piece of information to make a conclusion. Those mechanisms save energy, but they also lead to systematic biases, which find their way in how we make purchasing decisions.

Another beer experiment

William Poundstone, the author of “Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value”, describes a study with several pricing choices for beer to demonstrate the relativity of the concept of “value”.

In the first set-up four out of five people chose more premium option. Addition of a cheaper alternative clearly shifted preferences towards more affordable alternative. Definitely not the best portfolio decision. Introducing a more premium option in the third set-up created a swing towards premium direction and generated higher revenue. Apparently it’s all relative. Not only when it comes to beer!

The best portfolio Gillette can get

With hardly any competition, there is not much incentive for Gillette to introduce break-through products too often. However simplifying consumer choice still could potentially help growing revenues. It’s hard to believe that consumers can really differentiate between Gillette Fusion ProShield and Gillette Fusion ProGlide. If there is at all any brand awareness measurements for both, those two would probably be randomly similar. And if you can’t measure, you can’t manage.

In the 90s P&G decreased the number of SKU’s of Head&Shoulders – world’s best selling shampoo – from 26 to 15. This famously led to 10% sales growth. Of all companies, P&G, the current owner of Gillette brand, has all the expertise for listening to consumers&shoppers and building efficient portfolios. There is a number of ways this could work for Gillette systems (i.e. razors with cartridges). Old-school three-tier pricing approach with entry-level, mainstream and premium product families might be one of them. Fusion family could use some name simplification as ProShield and ProGlide are probably redundant as well as a razor without a “flexball”. One of the ways to selectively market the shaving experience to consumers with different needs is, for example, to color-code blades (cartridges) instead, depending on their lubricating, cooling, micro-comb etc. features and apply this to other sub- brands, including Mach3 Turbo.  Fusion has been on the market for a while now, so soon there will be a time for the next premium-priced generation. At that point simplicity of the Gillette brand architecture would be even more important.

There are lots of brilliant marketers in P&G. Certainly with simplifying shopper experience in mind they’d definitely be able to take the confusion out of the male shaving category.

In case people managing Gillette these days read this, it would be great to simplify things for us men out there. I’d definitely love to see that in a couple of years, when I’ll be shopping for a new razor!